Sports bars in Richmond celebrate Super Bowl Sunday

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - With the LA Rams being crowned Super Bowl Champions, sports bars in Richmond are still riding the high of booming business.

This year’s big game looked nothing like last year for spots that depend on crowds to bring in the big bucks.

In 2021, there was a curfew that cut off alcohol sales at 10 p.m. and a 50% capacity limit.

Wood and Iron and Home Team Grill pulled off a new and improved celebration, even with supply chain issues and other obstacles.

“It does feel good to see a packed restaurant again for sure,” Owner of Home Team Grill Mark Overby said. “It’s a very exciting day for us, we always say football is a marathon and this is the big finale for us.”

At Home Team, big turnout was inevitable now that restrictions are no longer in place.

“We’re definitely busier, we have better capacity than we did last year,” Overby said. “This year we’ve had challenges getting food in especially.”

Home Team is not the only sports bar that had to plan weeks ahead of time to make sure supply chain issues wouldn’t spoil the Super Bowl.

“It’s a lot of preparation, it’s not what the customers see out front. There’s a lot of stuff going on in the back, weeks of preparation for it,” Wood and Iron General Manager Chris Ryan said. “Making sure all our supplies were ready with some of the supply issues were going on.”

Wood and Iron celebrated its first Super Bowl Sunday at its new Scotts Addition location.

“This year there were some different struggles than last and for us, we had to be super prepared,” Ryan said. “This is our first chance at a Super Bowl Sunday.”

Plenty of buzz from fans filled the bars with tons of game-day energy and hype in each restaurant, showing some signs of normalcy.

“It’s just constant there’s a buzz in the air, we felt that all morning since customers started coming in,” Ryan said.

Both bars say take-out sales were also through the roof, with many people throwing their Super Bowl parties at home.

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