Top 5 St. Patrick's Day Bars and Their Visitors

St. Patrick's Day is here. Cities are putting on parades, dyeing the river green, and people are getting out to celebrate. Recently, Safegraph announced their March datathon focused on analyzing foot traffic trends at Chicago bars during St. Patrick's Day, which reads as follows:

Identify trends to drinking establishments (NAICS Code 722401) in Chicago with a focus the weekend prior and after St. Patrick’s day. Utilizing alternative datasets is encouraged.

Spatial.ai's segmentation is designed to segment the people behind the foot traffic. So we thought we'd take a crack at describing the scene at each bar by the type of people visiting it. 

Top St. Patrick’s Day Bars

We ranked top St. Patrick's day bars by their greatest share of visits on St. Patrick’s day. We filtered to the top 50% most visited bars in Chicago and ranked them by percent (%) of visits on St. Patrick's Day.

A quick google search of these bars reveals that almost all of them are very Irish influenced if not specifically Irish Pubs. Let’s see what we learn about their visitors through the PersonaLive segmentation. By matching back the home block group of the visitor to the dominant PersonaLive segment we can get a profile of different visitors for each bar.

#1 O'Shaughnessy's Public House: Where everybody belongs.

The top three types of patrons for O’Shaughnessy’s Public couldn’t be more different. #Urbanists are wealthier single and hip renters. #Faith&Football are blue collar and middle aged. #MixedMecca tend to be Asian or Hispanic service workers. No matter who you are, you'll probably find your crew here. 

#2 The Lodge Tavern: Best For Wealthy Singles

We are beginning to see a pattern of Young Professional’s interest here in St. Patrick’s day and the Chicago bar scene in general, in this case ~ 45% of the people you’ll run into at The Lodge are Young Professionals (#HighRisers, #RisingProfessionals, #Urbanists).  Visitors to this bar have the highest median incomes of the top 5.

#3 Paddy Mac’s: Where Young Singles Mingle

Paddy Mac’s top three segments are all fresh-out-of-college singles starting their careers. So if you are single and young this is the place to be. Interestingly, rounding out the final two are #LatinVibe and #VivaLaVogue, the only two segments that are primarily hispanic in the top 5 bars list. 

#4 Kuma’s Corner Belmont: Where St. Patrick's Day Means Blue Collar Meat and Heavy Metal

According to their website, this bar’s mission is to “give back to our communities that support us for our love of meat and heavy metal." So it is not surprising to see some grittier segments. #RaisingTheBar tops the list followed by rural small town segments: #CrackerBarrelBarons, #MainStreetUSA.

#5 Emerald Loop Bar: Rocking The Suburbs... In The City

What is shocking about the visitors to this bar is that 2 out of the 3 segments are non locals! #RisingProfessionals are the only group of these segments found within a 10 minute drive from Emerald Loop Bar. The rest of these segments are driving in from the suburbs. #FusianFamilies and #BabiesBurbs&Blessings tend to have children.

Conclusion

While it is clear young professionals in Chicago are drawn to St. Patrick’s day themed bars, we were surprised by how different the visitors are to each location.

Putting It To Work

Beyond knowing the scene, bars and restaurants can put this information to work from menu and experience personalization to running targeted audiences to the right segments.

1. Pricing & Offerings: The typical patron for Kuma’s corner is making 25k-50k whereas the typical patron for The Lodge Tavern is making $100k. This insight should inform menu pricing.

2. Personalize the Experience: What if you are O'Shaughnessy's Public House and you have the impossible task of finding music your diverse patrons would enjoy? Well, sort who they are following on social media. MC Hammer for the win? Well, at least Urbanists will tolerate it.

3. Geotargeted Advertising: The Emerald Loop Bar can promote their Bagpipes and Irish Dancers to every #BabiesBurbs&Blessings and #FusianFamilies household in Chicago (606,271 individuals) on Facebook through the Audience Builder.