New Scaratings

They've opened one location now in Oshawa and have another in west part of Toronto area (Oakville/Mississauga) either just opened or opening soon
another dozen or so locations on the way now that they've settled their copyright infrigement case with our local separate Wild Wings chain.

one word of warning - don't go expecting to find Buzztime trivia. the Oshawa location does not have BT and is not intending to install per manager. He believes the other Canadian locations will not be getting BT either.

???? What the fuck good is a BWW that doesn't have Buzztime?

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"He is a creative man of many interests . . . film, poetry, karate, music, dance, and TRIVIA. He is a man of passion and mystery. He is a man of lust."

I don't think it's the wings! BT seems to be part of BWWs corporate marketing so I don't believe a local franchise would have a choice.

It's probably just different regional executives trying to match local tastes for entertainment, but my macchiavellian side suggests this would be a good test marketing experiment to see if the expenxe of a few hundred a month positively impacts the location, without changing existing locations or existing expectations in the more mature market. Even at a sizeable likely discount, 500 or so locations paying BT fees is going to show up on a P&L review at some point sufficiently to suggest the question. Hope that the answer is good...because BT without their biggest customer has a short life expectancy.

A timely reminder for BWW-based players (especially spenders not tea-sippers) to ensure that their GMs and their ubiquitous corporate surveys hear why our custom exists.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Yep! If it weren't for BT, I would not have set foot in a BWW more than once, or stayed more than 10 minutes.

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"Truth Like Football. Gets kicked around much, before reaching goal." - Charlie Chan

" Don't look back, The bastards might be gaining on you." - Satchel Paige

Frank

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liljol, still residing in a humble lil abode in Buzztime's Backyard, San Diego County, in The Horribly Site-Poor Golden State, California...

<--805 NTN Buzztime sites visited as of 11/13/2018...

F CUBS!!!!! FBOSOX!!!!!

FPDRES!!!!! FCHGRS!!!!!

Every time I have ever set foot in any BWW, it was to play NTN/Buzztime. However, if the manager in Canada thinks it's in his best interest to not have Buzztime in his restaurants, that's his call.

(But since most people would expect to see Buzztime wherever there is a BWW, this is another reason for Buzztime to fix their Site Finder!)

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

A few months ago, BWW changed the format of their survey, handed out to random customers, to include a question about why we came to BWW, inlcuding trivia as a choice.

I'm fairly worried given these two indicators. Hopefully, it will be just a Canada thing, and the Canadian BWW's will die without trivia.

Something to consider is that at BWW a lot of playmaker time is spent serving as a pacifier to kids playing Shark Attack. BWW would lose it's charm to many parents without this distraction.

I think it's important to remember that BWW is an entirely new place to Canadians. Few would have heard of it, unless they played Buzztime (thus seeing it on the results boards) or saw it on their travels in the US. Thus, while most Americans might expect to find Buzztime in a BWW, I'd guess that most Canadians wouldn't. Having never heard of BWW before, Canadians would see it as another beer-and-wings place that just opened--worth trying if you like beer and wings, but maybe a place to avoid if you don't. Given that most Canadians would have no expectations of BWW other than beer and wings, I'd suggest that it is likely impossible to speculate on BWW's Canadian success (or failure) based on the presence or absence of Buzztime. It may fail on food, or service, or any number of other reasons, however; but I don't think Buzztime's absence will be a factor.

I agree with what you say, but if it failed based on mediocre food, or too noisy an atmosphere, that could be an indication that trivia is important to the chain's growth in the U.S. and elsewhere.

It may, or it may not. Ignoring the planned lack of Buzztime, I still see two challenges that BWW's Canadian operation will face:

-- Location. Steve mentioned Oshawa and Oakville/Mississauga. Both of these are pretty much suburbs of Toronto nowadays, which means they're competing with all the sports-bar-beer-and-wings places that would be expected in and around a big city. And there is a lot of sports bar competition in southern Ontario, with established chains (Shoeless Joe's, Boston Pizza, etc.) and neighbourhood independents resting on their reputations. BWW would not be offering anything that doesn't currently exist, and would have to work hard to prove itself.

-- Success in one area doesn't necessarily mean success in the other. Krispy Kreme--the donut with the cult following in the US--flopped miserably in Canada. Going the other way, Canada's popular Swiss Chalet family restaurant chain tried a small expansion into the US, was unsuccessful, and retreated back home. There are successful crossovers both ways, but predicting what will be successful and what will not can be difficult. Perhaps, to get back to my first point, understanding your competition is key--Krispy Kreme couldn't attract Canadians away from Tim Hortons, and Swiss Chalet couldn't attract Americans away from Boston Market.

At any rate, if BWW's head office is looking at this expansion as a "how well do we do without Buzztime?" experiment, I would hope that their research took the above into consideration. I'm sure they did--it's an expensive proposition to charge into without doing your homework--but sometimes, you never know.

Just thought I'd update the situation. There are now 4 Buffalo Wild Wings in Ontario. None have Buzztime.

One of the locations is in Guelph which has no BT sites. Population 115,000 and there is a university. A Buzztime site could do well there. Another of the BWW is in Newmarket which only has 1 other site. this is another underserved community where BT in the BWW could have been a success

Their radio ads mention wall-to-wall TV's to watch all the sports games..I guess BT would be too much of a distraction

"Sports Bars" are everywhere. That seems to be the major motif bars go for to draw customers these days. "What's the place like? Oh, it's a sports bar." I understand the attraction when there is a big event going on--like an NFL Sunday afternoon e.g.--but most of the times people go to a sports bar, there's nothing going on; no sports event that brought people in.

So they got a zillion monitors and all the screens in the place seem to be set to the various ESPN channels with the sound turned off. I've gone to so many places where you look at the screen and see a 1956 Baltimore Colts game or a sports talking heads show on with no sound...what's the point in that? They wanna show you whatever's on ESPN but you can't hear the audio and the jukebox is playing anyway so what's the point?!

BWW got it right. They invest lots of money on having monitors all over the room and if you're there during the vast majority of the time when there is no live sports event to watch while you buy their drinks and food, at least you can play trivia or poker or games. There is also a benefit to having NTN trivia even when no one is playing: many people at BWWs everywhere follow the trivia questions and answers without playing a box. It's a lot more entertaining to watch the buzztime games while you eat than it is to watch a sports talk show that's muted while Aerosmith wails on the juke!

The central question is why they are not putting Buzztime in their Ontario sites. Seems like a bad sign to me.

This is nothing new. I seem to remember the subject coming up a few years ago, maybe even on the old BT forums, when BWW first started really expanding into Canada. I'm not saying it is a good sign, but it is not a recent development.

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Anon
"He may seem like Mr. Rogers but a dark spirit lies beneath."

on the subject of franchises without Buzztime, the Applebees franchise in Courtenay, Victoria and Coquitlam, both owned by the same guy, do not have Buzztime. When approached by me on this subject, he said he had tried it in Coquitlam but it didnt go over well.(metro Vancouver area catchment site). Closest Buzztime enriched sites are in Victoria on this island, no one is going to drive over 350k one way to play, there are none north of that on vancouver island.

still siteless sigh

the Buffalo Wild Wings in Oshawa now has Buzztime..they are finally getting in sync with the US locations. I haven't checked the other canuckistan locations.

I'm now in my eighth month of BT withdrawal. No ill effects

You should try out the new Countdown Steve. I find it much more to my liking.

no change in status sigh