Local businesses are scoring big as the Patriots enjoy postseason success.
There’s an electricity in the cold New England air, according to Phil Jay, owner of Perfecto’s Caffe in North Andover, who said the Patriots’ playoff run has given his customers something to look forward to. That excitement, after the last few years’ dismal win-loss records, is boosting businesses’ bottom line big time.
If the Patriots pull it off with a win Sunday in the American Football Conference Championship and shot at the Super Bowl, cash registers across the Merrimack Valley and southern New Hampshire will continue to ring up sales.
“I see it in people’s faces,” he said about customers coming into the shop every Sunday. “Everyone is wearing gear when they come in and talking about the Patriots.
“There hasn’t been that buzz the last couple years and now we’re all really excited it’s back.”
The Patriots even have Jay’s cookie decorator working overtime.
During Christmas, she’s decorating gingerbread cookies once or twice a week. Even though gingerbread cookies are available year round, she’s in up to four times a week now to keep up with the demand of decorating thousands of gingerbread people to have jerseys on like the people coming in to eat them while watching Patriots’ games.
The gingerbread people sport the numbers of fan favorites like Drake Maye, Stefon Diggs and Christian Gonzalez. And of course, there are extra Maye ones on hand.
Jay said he has plenty of winter-themed cookies and pastries, but this time of year, people want everything Patriots, so much so that on Sundays, red, white and blue sprinkles fill its funfetti muffin.
“There are good vibes and good feelings in the middle of a Sunday,” Jay said. “Morale is up, even on snowy, gloomy, gray days. We never thought they were going to make it this early in Drake Maye’s career. We’ll take it and it’s bringing so much joy to everybody.”
And that joy also keeps customers ordering the same thing each game as good luck charms and the fans’ ways feeling they helped in the team’s win.
“I don’t want to say we’re a superstitious crowd up in the Northeast, but we repeat what we do just so things stay the way they are and the winning continues,” Jay said with a laugh.
Like the ‘old days’
At Butcher Boy, just down the Osgood Street plaza in North Andover, deli manager Chris Maroun has seen good luck “traditions” boosting sales each week. Maroun said there is customer who comes in each week and orders the same thing for every Pats’ game.
“She said, ‘Every time I buy four pounds of buffalo dip, they seem to win,’” Maroun recalled the woman telling him. “I said, ‘All right, well keep buying four pounds.”
It’s all hands on deck as the Butcher Boy staff begin preparing for Sunday games as early as a week in advance. The staff start marinating its sought-after teriyaki or buffalo chicken wings on Monday to soak up all the flavors for four or five days before they are ready to be cooked.
Preparation for the popular buffalo chicken cheese dip starts on Wednesdays as Butcher Boy goes through at least 500 pounds of it, sometimes 1,000 pounds, when the Patriots play.
“When Tom Brady was in the Super Bowl all those years, that long Super Bowl run, people would always tell us they needed to stop at Butcher Boy to get our buffalo dip and wings for the game,” Maroun said. “It just became a tradition.”
Maroun said no one ever envisioned the type of impact of Brady and those Super Bowl teams had on business. When the team leveled off, becoming “mediocre” at best, he said there was a noticeable drop in sales on game days.
Now, things are picking up again.
Butcher Boy’s William Yameen said it’s like the “old days with Tom Brady,” with the team’s success driving business in otherwise slower winter months, he added.
“We need Drake Maye to keep going and not get injured,” Maroun said.
Stachey’s Olde-Time Pizzeria in North Andover and Salem, New Hampshire, has also reaped in the benefits of Maye’s performance and the winning season.
“I just like seeing everybody getting together and enjoying football again,” said Terry Holland, owner of Stachey’s Pizzeria.
Holland has been in the business for 37 years. He said he saw a shift to the Patriots becoming a family team and sharing a pizza while enjoying the game when Tom Brady came to town. Before Brady, he said he watched as a group of guys would order some pizza and get together for a game.
“Everybody got so excited about the Patriots all those years and it became a family event,” Holland said.
After Brady left and some losing seasons followed, the volume of game-day pizza orders slowed.
With the team’s postseason success and rejuvenated interest with superstar-in-the-making quarterback Maye, pizza sales are back up when the Patriots are playing.
“It’s great to have it back now because business was not good on a Sunday with how the team was last year,” Holland said. We lost a lot of business and it started to fall off slowly after the Brady years. It was terrible last year.”
He said he’s also seen how this Patriots’ team led by the likable Maye is bringing more families together again to share watching the team on Sundays.
It’s all combined to touch down for healthy, steady business.
“Luckily this year, we’ve had a good year with a lot of wins,” Holland said.
On game days this season, Holland has had to put on extra staff at both locations to handle hundreds of orders for pizza and chicken fingers.
Afternoon start times keep Stachey’s staff busy all day. They have a pregame rush and more orders flood in ahead of halftime. When the Patriots win, people celebrate with more pizza.
The winning combination has returned.
“I had a lot of hope with (Patriots Head Coach Mike) Vrabel coming back to the Patriots and he brought a little fire to us,” Holland said.