With the 2026 NFL Draft taking place only a few blocks away, Peppi’s sandwich shop on Pittsburgh’s North Side simplified its menu, stocked up on ingredients and brought in extra staff ahead of what owner Jeff Trebac expected to be a hectic three days.
Business on Thursday — the draft’s first and likely best-attended day — ended up being “anemic,” he said. Friday wasn’t shaping up to be much better, and he’s not holding his breath for a gangbusters Saturday.
“I took a gamble,” Trebac said. “We lost.”
A small handful of restaurants and bars near the draft footprint in Downtown Pittsburgh and the North Shore have been booming during the draft, which drew 320,000 people (but not necessarily unique visitors) on its first night, according to the NFL.
Food trucks and stalls inside the event have also enjoyed lengthy lines. They’re likely getting their share of the $120 million to $213 million economic impact tourism agency Visit Pittsburgh predicts the draft will bring.
But at establishments in the rest of the city and even into the suburbs, customers have been hard to come by.
The ghost-town feel brought to mind the massive January snowstorm for Emma Hopf, a food runner at DiAnoia’s Eatery in the Strip District
“And we still had more customers then than we did yesterday,” she said.
Bill Fuller, president of Big Burrito Restaurant Group, has seen a steady stream of diners at Alta Via in Market Square, his only restaurant right by the event. Many of his 17 other venues have been quiet.
Reservation books were sparse Thursday and Friday at Casbah and Soba in the East End. Sames goes for Eleven in the Strip District. Even the Mad Mex locations in Canonsburg and Cranberry have been unusually quiet.
Fuller has his theories on where all the diners went.
“There was so much hype about there was going to be a bunch of traffic and a bunch of crowds, everybody locally was scared into their houses,” he said.
These woes haven’t totally come out of left field. Some restaurateurs in Kansas City and Green Bay, both of which hosted the NFL Draft in recent years, reported similarly slow business during the event.
Jerad Bachar, president and CEO of Visit Pittsburgh, previously warned that businesses outside the event footprint shouldn’t “overprepare for a large influx” of customers.
Like so many other Pittsburgh restaurants, Hofbrauhaus in the South Side missed the memo and secured lots of extra supplies. Traffic has been down by about 40% during the draft, according to Emily Krepinevich, the brewery’s manager. But perhaps Saturday, when the draft gets into its later rounds before wrapping up entirely, will be a different story.
“I still have hope,” she said.