LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — A Super Bowl event leaves behind a bitter food fight after a Las Vegas pizza restaurant blasts a tailgate party hosted by strip restaurateur Guy Fieri.
Yukon Pizza posted on social media about the Guy’s Flavortown Tailgate being a “bust” and major corporate sponsors offering “mountains of free food inside the tailgate,” which impacted local Las Vegas vendors trying to sell food.
The event was marketed as a free tailgate with more than 30 restaurant popups with an anticipated crowd of 10,000 fans behind the LINQ Promenade. Some local Las Vegas restaurants expected a big win when it came to selling food but instead discovered a loss, including Antidote, a restaurant selling flavors of Hawaii.
“We didn’t know they were going to give out free food at the event,” Thomas Tapat, co-owner of Antidote, said. “That was kind of like the downfall on their part for not letting us know.”
Antidote also posted about their frustration on social media. Tapat said the restaurant, which is located at 6496 Medical Center St., closed on Saturday to prepare for the event.
“We prepped about 10 cases of chicken and went through about, in all, one case,” Tapat said. “And then shrimp we prepped, I think four cases; we probably only sold one case.”
Tapat said he and his staff had to throw out a majority of the food after the tailgate due to the amount of time it was out. He said among the food, labor, and equipment costs, he likely spent up to $7,000 for the tailgate and is waiting to learn if he had least broken even.
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Antidote and Yukon Pizza said the event coordinators asked them to prepare for the expected large crowd. Yukon Pizza reported selling 10% of the sandwiches they were told to prepare. The picture on Instagram shows five deep pans with what appears to be the leftover sausages from the event.
Tapat said the situation was difficult for small businesses.
“If they did tell us that they were giving out free food, and maybe we could have just stayed opened (at their southwest valley location) on Saturday and Sunday and made more money,” Tapat said.
However, not all local businesses share the same sentiment. O’Neil Smith, owner of the House of Dutch Pot at 4255 S. Durango Road, used the tailgate as a marketing opportunity.
“I went with 10,000 flyers and then came back with none,” Smith said. “After we left, even the LINQ parking lot, we hit all of them with flyers everywhere. We saw a car, full of cars, fleet of cars. We just made sure we went and hand out flyers.”
Smith’s restaurant serves Caribbean cuisine and was featured on Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” in 2022. He said he didn’t overprepare food for the tailgate and wanted to focus on informing locals about his restaurant.
“If I went just for the money, I will be depressed right now, and I didn’t want to do that. So I went to market the restaurant.”
News 3 reached out to the PR group that helped coordinate the event about the concerns raised by some businesses but has yet to receive a response.