Gamedays in Baton Rouge are a serious venture. For fans, this means lining up your tailgate plans, shopping for tiger print and securing your tickets. For local businesses, football season means assessing their playbook on contraflow, planning gameday menus and reevaluating their hours.
Less than fifteen minutes from Tiger Stadium, Mid City Beer Garden offers a curated list of beers, cocktails and even mocktails. Mid City Beer Garden hosts weekly watch parties for LSU, Southern and the Saints, with promotions including $8 Tipsy Tiger drinks with a valid Southern or LSU ID.
“We just welcome everybody in for gamedays,” general manager Sommer Malcomb said. “We wanna see the Tiger fans and cheer the Tigers on with them.”
Mid City Beer Garden plays ad-free audio for the entire duration of the game, which requires a fair amount of preparation. “For gameday season, we try to find the schedules as soon as we can,” Malcomb said.
Though football season brings good business, the beer garden experiences lower patronage during home games. “People want to be closer to campus,” Malcomb said. “Townies go to the games because they all graduated from there.”
Despite Baton Rouge being crowded by purple and gold come kickoff, many people from rival teams stop by Mid City on gameday. Malcomb mentioned that many Florida and Tennessee fans have stopped by the beer garden in the past years.
On the other side of I-10 is Our Mom’s Restaurant and Bar, which hosts watch parties for both LSU and Saints football games, with every TV and speaker ready to keep guests updated on scores. As a restaurant and bar, Our Mom’s brings in a diverse group of patrons.
“It feels really good when you walk in there and see purple and gold everywhere,” said cofounder J.P. Ngo. “It’s a good mix of everybody. For gamedays, I don’t think there is an age demographic for LSU.”
For LSU’s home game against the Florida Gators, Our Mom’s ran 75-cent wings and free shots for every touchdown. Ngo shared that they are always open to requests.
“Normally we like to give whatever people ask for,” Ngo said. “Last time it was people saying, ‘We want wings,’ so we said, ‘Alright cool, then we’ll do wings.’”
Most LSU fans have learned firsthand how difficult navigating post-game traffic can be following a game. Our Mom’s faces the unique challenge of being on the opposite side of it, with many Baton Rougians unable to pass Nicholson Drive to get to Burbank.
“Contraflow kind of messes us up for the area we’re in,” Ngo said. “So dinners on gamedays aren’t the best for us, but lunches are good, Sundays are amazing, Fridays are amazing. It’s a net positive at the end of the week.”
Still, if you’re unable to score tickets and want to avoid the post-game traffic, Our Mom’s may be exactly what you’re looking for.
“We’re always watching the game, so if you don’t wanna fight that traffic or the whole Tigerland and campus area, we’re so close that you’re still among a bunch of LSU fans,” Ngo said. “We’re just looking to bring good times to everybody.”
Fat Boys Pizza, a mere five minute walk from Tiger Stadium, is such a go-to for gamedays that they recently shifted their hours to allow guests to grab a slice after a night game. According to manager Sydney Casey, the pizza spot will now close at midnight.
Though just off campus, contraflow affects the pizza joint as well. With many roads central to LSU being closed to allow for safer traffic, fans are unable to order a car from a rideshare app, which leaves many stranded on campus.
“We’d rather them be safe,” Casey said of patrons staying at Fat Boys in the midst of traffic clearing. “We don’t have much of an issue of people getting here, but at the end of the night we have an issue of getting people home.”
As for business, football proves to be a profitable season, with profits being 140% of what they are during the summer. Comparatively, basketball performs 84% compared to summer, with baseball turning out 65.5%.
“For football, our guest check average drops drastically because people are coming up and ordering a beer and closing out their check six, seven times,” Casey said. “So you’ll have 150 orders that are only $7 so it drops that guest check drastically.”
Fat Boys Pizza, though having a bar and a handful of tables both inside and outside of the restaurant, is not conducive to host the 100,000 football fans seated in Tiger Stadium.
“It’s definitely a capacity issue. We have a smaller dining area, so we run out of seating very fast,” Casey said.
These business hurdles are a testament to a city-wide love for LSU football. Whether you’re in the stadium come kickoff, or ordering drinks at a local restaurant, the energy of gameday is absolutely undeniable.
