Operations

The Super Bowl of restaurant operations: Why game day is every day for pizza chains

Super Bowl Sunday serves as a high-stakes stress test that reveals whether a restaurant has built the scalable, automated systems necessary to turn extreme peak volume into a standard daily operation rather than a once-a-year crisis.

Photo: Adobe Stock (AI generated)

February 5, 2026 by Christian Wiens — Co-Founder & CEO, Loman AI

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The restaurant industry waits all year for Super Bowl Sunday. For pizza restaurants in particular, it's the championship game of operational excellence. A single day that poses the ultimate test of whether your systems can handle extreme volume, and for some, that can make or break annual performance.

But here's what most people don't realize: for high-performing pizza operations, Super Bowl Sunday isn't an anomaly. It's a stress test that reveals which restaurants have built systems capable of handling championship-level volume every single day.

The stakes are higher than you think

Super Bowl Sunday consistently ranks among the top five sales days of the year for pizza restaurants. The operational challenge is straightforward: massive volume concentration in a short window.

Consider the math. On a typical Sunday, your restaurant might process 50 orders. If Super Bowl Sunday generates even five times that volume – a conservative estimate given industry reports of the day's significance – you're looking at 250 orders. At an average ticket of $45, that's $11,250 compared to your typical $2,250 Sunday.

But here's where the math gets more interesting. There are 52 Sundays in a year. If a normal Sunday represents roughly 2% of your annual Sunday revenue, a day generating five times normal volume represents 10% of your total Sunday revenue, in a single day. And many operators report Super Bowl performance well above five times normal volume.

The difference between capturing that revenue and losing it often comes down to a simple question: can you actually answer the phone?

Why championship operations think differently

The instinct when preparing for Super Bowl Sunday is straightforward: add more staff to handle more calls. Bring in extra hands, extend shifts, maybe pull someone from the kitchen to help with phones.

But the restaurants that dominate game day know this approach fails precisely when you need it most. Training quality phone staff takes weeks. Even with adequate staffing, you hit physical limits. How many phone lines do you have? How many simultaneous calls can your team handle before customers get busy signals? During peak hours, you're competing against the customer's willingness to wait on hold, and their patience is measured in seconds.

Championship operations don't rely on heroic staffing efforts. They've eliminated the phone bottleneck entirely. When every call is answered immediately and processed efficiently, regardless of how many other calls are coming in, the phone transforms from liability to asset. Staff focus on food quality and in-restaurant service while the phone handles itself.

These operators understand that Super Bowl Sunday just amplifies challenges they face every Friday dinner rush, every March Madness lunch special, every short-staffed night. They've built systems where handling extreme call volume is standard procedure, not a once-a-year scramble.

The widening gap

Customer expectations in the restaurant industry are set by the best performers. When someone calls a pizza restaurant and gets an immediate answer, accurate service, and a seamless ordering experience, that becomes their baseline expectation everywhere.

The challenge is that customers don't compare you to your direct competitors down the street. They compare you to the best experience they've ever had. This creates a widening gap in the industry. The restaurants that have built championship-caliber operations are raising the bar for everyone. The restaurants still relying on traditional staffing models for phone coverage are falling further behind.

In a commoditized market where customers can order pizza from half a dozen places within a three-mile radius, operational excellence isn't a nice-to-have. It's the only sustainable competitive advantage.

What Super Bowl Sunday really reveals

Super Bowl Sunday doesn't create operational challenges. It reveals them.

The restaurants that thrive on game day do so because they've built systems where championship-level performance is their baseline. They've recognized that the phone — historically the most stressful part of high-volume days—can be transformed into their most reliable asset.

Preparing for Super Bowl Sunday misses the point. Build operations that work every day, and game day takes care of itself. Because in an industry where customers have unlimited options and zero patience for busy signals, the restaurants that treat peak performance as standard operating procedure are the ones that win, not just on game day, but 365 days a year.

About Christian Wiens

Christian Wiens is the Founder and CEO of Loman AI, the leading Voice AI platform for restaurants. Since founding the Austin-based company in 2024, Christian has scaled Loman to serve customers nationwide, processing tens of millions in order volume and helping restaurants capture more revenue while reducing labor costs.

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