BLACKSBURG, Va. – While College GameDay coming to Virginia Tech is exciting for students and the university, it is also exciting for the local businesses.
“A lot of people [are] coming from out of town, they might come in on Saturday night or something, so it might be a bigger weekend than expected,” said Michael Allen Buchanan, owner of Souvlaki in Blacksburg.
With every big game at Virginia Tech, local businesses and restaurants get to capitalize on the influx of people.
“We’re still pretty busy on normal weekends but as far as game days, that’s when you get the mass influx of students, people from out of town, [and] people from across the country,” said Will Greene, assistant general manager at Cabo Fish Taco.
Cabo Fish Taco is a really popular spot on a regular weekend, but with this weekend’s game, they said they’ll be slammed.
“I think we are going to have a pretty high turnout this weekend, especially with the College GameDay going on,” Greene said. “I’m looking forward to seeing how many people we’ll be serving this weekend, and I know we’ll have a large crowd that’s ready to come eat some tacos.”
As I walked down Main Street, I also stopped to talk to the folks at Souvlaki to see how they were preparing for the weekend.
“I think it will definitely help the businesses downtown,” said Buchanan. “We got a good following among the alumni so I think people, they’re coming back for games, typically like to come here — especially football, basketball.”
He said during the colder months, any uptick in business is welcomed.
“Basketball helps because downtown there is not a lot of foot traffic during the cooler months and it adds anywhere from 10 to 15,000 people in town.”
Talking to some of these businesses, they tell us game days can be crazy for them. They said game days are always some of their biggest days of the year.