Justin Brady has little interest in football, and he’ll be happy to work delivering pizzas for Portland Pie Co. while the Super Bowl is on TV Sunday.

But he is rooting for the New England Patriots — and not because of the guy with the same last name.

“I find if the home team is kind of doing well, it affects the tips in a positive way,” said Brady, no relation to Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

The Super Bowl is always a big payday for bars and other businesses that thrive on good times, even more so in New England when the Patriots are playing.

“We’ve had the biggest January we’ve had in years because the Pats are back in the Super Bowl,” said Chris Black, vice president for on-premise sales for Nappi Distributors, which supplies beer and wine throughout much of southern Maine. “The day they won the playoff game and were going to the Super Bowl, we started getting calls the following day: ‘I need beer up here now.’ “

“There’s just a lot more parties going on,” he said. “Even five years ago, people didn’t have 60-inch high-def TVs in their house. Now, they have a reason to have a party.”

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Pizza shops that deliver are expecting a Super Bowl payday as party hosts lay out spreads for their guests.

“From 4 p.m. to kickoff it’s really, really busy,” said David Lengyel, owner of Willows Pizza & Restaurant in South Portland. “After halftime, it slows down.”

The big chain pizza places will ship out more than 4 million pies nationally on Super Bowl Sunday, according to an estimate by the Wall Street Journal.

Hot chicken wings and nachos are also big sellers, said Tyler Sing, a manager at Portland Pie.

“A lot of it is more of the last minute, people realizing they need food or need more food, and they’ll call right before the game or before halftime,” he said.

Chris Kyle, co-owner of Pat’s Pizza in Yarmouth, said most of Sunday’s restaurant business will be takeout.

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“Because it’s become sort of a home holiday, it helps our takeout business, but our dining room is usually wide open during the game,” Kyle said.

His bar will probably be less crowded than on a typical game day because, for the Super Bowl, people have get-togethers at home.

“A lot of our regulars have told us they love coming in that night, because they can actually get a seat at the bar,” he said.

The Fourth of July is the biggest holiday for beer sales, said Black of Nappi Distributors, but when the Patriots — or the Bruins, Celtics or Red Sox– are playing for a championship, sales jump.

“It’s everything across the board — domestic, imports — we’ll see a spike in everything,” he said. “We talk to wholesalers in Boston. They live and die by this.”

Consumables aside, other Maine businesses have found the NFL to be a good friend this year.

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Walter Butler’s work will be on display at the Super Bowl itself, as team owners who helped negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with the players are given their own trophies.

His company, New England Castings of Hiram, which typically makes surgical tools, engine components and public art, was commissioned to craft engraved footballs, made of polished steel and walnut, to the specifications that the owner of a Super Bowl contender would expect.

“It’s a different type of accuracy and precision needed for fit and finish of a trophy than for surgical tools,” said Butler, who’s an engineer. “What it looks and feels like is immensely important.”

The company produced about 20 trophies, including one for Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a key figure in the agreement. If not for that new labor agreement, there wouldn’t have been a Super Bowl on Sunday.

The trophies are three-quarters the size of a real football, about 9 inches high not including the base, said Butler, who declined to say how much they cost.

Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

dhench@pressherald.com

 


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