Question: How do some bars increase profits? The answer: trivia nights

Megan Fitzgerald has always been a fan of trivia, but she’s also the director of brand experience at Talea Beer Co. In Brooklyn, she wasn’t convinced it would be a good fit for a brewery founded by women.

In February, she begged her friends to come to Talea’s first night of entertainment, worried that few guys would show up. Instead, more than 70 beneficiaries joined.

“When people go out, they want something exciting and engaging and it’s more than just taking pictures or splashing beer,” Fitzgerald said. “The information is easy and fun, good for large groups or couples, and you can usually find it nearby.”

After a few weeks of partnering with the NYC Trivia League to host Wednesday night games, Fitzgerald said Talea trivia nights bring in nearly double the revenue of other weeknights, excluding special events. The venue constantly drew nearly 20 trivia teams, driving food and beverage sales throughout the two-hour game. She said bar staff get more tips, too.

Across the country, bars and restaurants are adding public events to their weekly or monthly schedules to attract more guests and generate higher profits. New brands are popping up in big cities and small towns, while some older companies have made their way back to pre-pandemic numbers. However, the pace of recovery has been slow as the industry struggles with hiring, according to consensus business leaders and restaurant owners.

While some pubs craft their own trivia questions, others partner with trivia or entertainment companies, who charge a flat fee for providing questions, infrastructure, and hosts. The basic idea is to bring in teams competing for trophies, to boost business or use extra space on a night that might normally be slower – and to build a new base of regular customers.

“Trivia is good for us because it’s more profitable to have during those slow times,” said Nick Marking of The Tap Yard in suburban Milwaukee, which generated nearly 30% more money during trivia nights at its five locations.

“The shows get you a certain amount, and then the prizes too, so you have to look at whether it’s worth it to have a tip in the long run considering your profit margin is about 15% to 25% in the bar world,” he said marking .

The NYC Trivia League, which hosts trivia at more than 100 venues in New York City, has outpaced its weekly event count from the early 2020 and Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns. The league charges a flat fee for bars and is free for players.

Colin Shaw, one of the league’s co-founders, said teams are bigger than they were before Covid – averaging around 3.5 people – when many pubs were barely holding their trashy nights. Shaw, who hosts trivia nights at The Gaf East on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, added that the league’s shift to a pen-and-paper digital platform has allowed for more efficient gaming.

“We’re filling the venue,” he said, “and I don’t think that would be the case if they were just going to a basketball or hockey game and were hoping for a crowd.”

The NYC Trivia League has recently brought in venues that previously didn’t think of themselves as trashy bars, Shaw said, adding more than a dozen to its lineup this year alone. Retention rates are up in 2023, and the league is becoming more selective with venues and hosts.

“I’m sure there are a million trivia apps out there, but there’s something about team competition, there’s something about community when like-minded people get together and compete in a space to play a silly game but everyone understands the rules,” Shaw said. .

According to Mike Costeo, Datassential’s “Fashion Scientist,” the rapid growth of trivia nights is part of a broader move toward “entertainment,” a mix of dining and interactive activities ranging from bar trivia to pickle eating concepts. Cousteau added that catering has been beneficial to many bars and restaurants since it does not significantly increase labor costs.

“You have more customers in your place, so you need more in-house staff, but it’s not something where you need to hire someone to manage that. Usually an outside vendor would do the trivia program,” Cousteau said.

According to a Datassential report from last year, 82% of Americans have been to at least one place to eat, and more than 50% of those customers said they were “very interested” in revisiting such an experience. Eighteen percent of respondents said they would visit entertainment venues more often if they had regular trivia nights.

“On trivia night, we easily double our sales over the night before,” said Will Arvidson, tasting room manager at Brooklyn Brewery, who said the venue usually brings about 150 people for its Thursday trivia event. “Sometimes it’s hard for us to sit people down, but we find a way.”

Victoria Dawes and Kristina Cheng, who teamed up on a recent Thursday at the Brooklyn Brewery, said they’ve been playing Bar trivia for about a decade and agree it’s even more popular now than before the pandemic. Both said they take time out each week to catch up with friends and show off their random knowledge.

“I feel like we’ve lost a lot of touch with each other, and the trivia was an especially fun way to have very normal interactions again,” said Dawes.

The rise of entertainment comes as inflation forces more Americans to scrutinize how they spend their money.

According to Datassential’s February Table Stakes report, 39% of consumers say they hold back from eating out, though Kostyo said cost-conscious people look to value-priced entertainment when they go out.

“A lot of consumers, they’re stuck at home all day and not really socializing, so they’re looking for those opportunities from the food service industry to connect with friends and family again,” Costello said.

“But that does not mean that they have returned in large numbers,” he added.

Teams can win cash prizes—up to $50 or $100 for first place at some bars—or free shots, food, or merchandise. These potential gains could encourage more spending from players and possibly offset the costs for budget-conscious trivia goers.

Conrad Coretti, who says his trivia team is usually in the top five at the Brooklyn Brewery and elsewhere, said he’ll likely cut back on spending other nights of the week so he can spend “more liberally” at bar trivia.

He said, “You show up with your group, and you don’t really have to interact with other people, so it was nice to hang out with people you don’t always see and have a good time.”

With so many new venues hosting trivia nights, Cousteau warned that bars may “prey on each other” as more companies try to put their flag in the trivia space. He saw more niche topics in his trivia nights attracting specific audiences.

To attract more consumers, some companies, such as Geeks Who Drink, have hired new test professors and brought in client managers to cultivate relationships with the venues. Trivia’s director of marketing, Brian Carr, said the company launched a “Twitch” quiz that’s still running today, and has maintained a writing team of 15 or more people to keep the creative content flowing.

Restoring old venues and setting up new ones has been a “slow-moving process,” but the company has continued to grow its presence in cities like Denver, Chicago, and Austin, Texas. It does full-service pub quizzes at about 650 venues, though that number was around 1,000 before the pandemic.

“We try to provide venues with a great starter kit to make sure the event keeps going, and we know that sometimes it takes two to three months to build that steady following,” Carr said. “They can really notice a lot different than before they have general information and then when they have it on these slow nights.”

Joshua Liberthal, founder of California-based King Trivia, which has locations in about 35 states, said he’s seen more trivia nights today than before the pandemic. However, with lower profit margins, many bars have had to do “much more” weekly events to stay afloat, which may explain why the company has gone from about 200 weekly venues in 2019 to about 325 now.

However, about 30% to 40% of King Trivia’s pre-Covid customers have gone out of business, and the rebuilding process has been bumpy.

“It wasn’t like you got your old clients back when I restarted things — it just started from scratch,” Lieberthal said. “Amazingly, we were much more profitable before the pandemic than we are today, even though we are a lot bigger than we used to be.”

Attendance and retention have, to some extent, returned to pre-pandemic levels, he said, due in part to the expansion of the company’s sales and customer service teams. Although every week, Lieberthal said, another customer stops working or pushes back the launch date because of staffing issues.

“Because everyone gets paid more, and because it’s more difficult to staff, you need more people working behind the scenes to make it all happen,” Lieberthal said. “It is an unfortunate fact that the break-even point is much higher in this industry than it used to be, but fortunately there are many places that are willing to make offers that are achievable.”

For the Wisconsin-based American Pub Quiz, which was founded by Michael Landman in 2007, everything from staffing to the cost of pencil cases has slowed the company’s pace of growth compared to before the pandemic.

By 2020, the company had 205 locations in eight states. He’s now back up to about 175 despite having to start from scratch and deal with the rising costs of doing business.

The company set up an online system that could handle dozens of other teams, but Landman noted that many venues were unable to keep up with the growing demand. Others with so many staffs couldn’t find a suitable petty host.

The locations were often short of one or two employees on a busy trashy night, said Tyson Sevier, general manager of Varsity Sports Café in Omaha, Nebraska, who has partnered with America’s Pub Quiz for a decade. He admitted that this was a far cry from the “staff horror stories” he said he had heard from other pub owners in town.

However, he said Varsity Sports Cafe’s trivia nights bring in $2,000 to $3,000 more compared to other weekend evenings.

“We’ve got more and more people calling and wanting to play, so I think there’s definitely interest like there’s only a couple of pubs that had trivia years ago and now every pub seems to have it,” Sevier said. “You have to do it now to be competitive.”