Bars, restaurants are looking for casual nights to help boost business

Nationwide, bars and restaurants are adding casual evening events to their schedules in an effort to attract more customers and increase profitability.

Kevin Whalen, founder and owner of Rally Cup Brewing in Baton Rouge, said he added a trivia night to the hobby around 2021 when the business started to take off after the pandemic. To get the event off the ground, he first brought in a third-party trivia company and recently transitioned to having brewery employees run the event every Tuesday.

“I don’t find it predictable — some nights we’re full, some nights we’re not,” says Wallen, who regularly hosts 35 to 40 people. But even if it doesn’t fill the taproom, it’s fun and brings life to the brewery on a Tuesday night.

While some pubs set up their own trivia, others partner with trivia or entertainment companies that charge a trivia fee to provide quizzes, infrastructure and hosts. According to CNBC. The premise is to bring teams in to compete for prizes, to boost business or use extra space on a typically slow night, and to build a new base of regular customers.

Michael Hatfield started Quizzical Trivia as a side project in 2008, hosting casual nights at Baton Rouge-area establishments, and turned to it full-time after losing his job at Blockbuster.

“This year, restaurants and bars have been a little slow to get back to normal after the pandemic,” Hatfield said. “March, I see business going on in a few places, but it varies.”

Hatfield said it’s the only full-time casual business he knows of operating in the Capital Region, but he’s seen “a couple young bucks” start their own small casual companies.