Last month, when plans for the RNC were ramping up, Brent Brashier said he was beyond excited. He says Doc’s Smokehouse, his downtown Milwaukee restaurant, lined up a contract with a national media organization to be its home base restaurant throughout the convention. Then two weeks until showtime, the organization pulled out of the contract, leaving Brashier high and dry.
“I quickly tried to pivot,” Brashier says. “We set up the beer garden, we spent a good deal of money, we have extra staff, we thought it would be busy, we tried to do the right thing and roll out the red carpet, printed out banners that said ‘Welcome GOP.’
But so far this week, he says business has been “dismal.”
Doc’s Smokehouse is on Vel Phillips Avenue, blocks away from Fiserv Forum, the stage of the RNC. Brashier says there are a couple of things affecting business. One is that the maps of the restricted areas don’t show all the streets that are blocked off, including the restaurant’s cross street, Wells Street. That’s made it challenging for customers to find him. The restaurant sits in a kind of limbo space only accessible from one entrance and behind large black fencing running the distance of the block.
The bigger problem is, in his words, the crowd is a “dud.”
“I’ve read a lot of things where they’ve said there’s gonna be 50,000 people here, but this looks like a weak Admiral’s game,” Brashier says. “There’s just not a lot of people down here.”
Tuesday, around lunch hour, the restaurant, and the pop-up beer garden Brashier set up for the RNC, were empty. And he’s not alone in this. Even for businesses, like his, which are a stone’s throw from where the delegates spend their days.
Melissa Medek works at the George Webb’s diner on M.L.K. Drive, across the street from the Hyatt hotel, where a number of media members and delegates are staying. Medek says she hopes business picks up after a painfully slow start this week. She also says that it’s been a challenge for her staff to get in because of last-minute changes the city made blocking off streets.
“I found out Friday that they were putting up a lot more blockades than we expected so blocking off streets like why are you blocking this off? That’s kind of dumb,” Medek says. “So we had plans to get everyone here and then because of no parking on the streets, and it getting hard for people to come in, they just weren’t coming in.”
But, if you’re lucky to be close enough to Fiserv – we’re talking a few hundred feet – you might be alright. That’s the story of the frozen daiquiri stand, Fat Tuesday. It's right across the plaza from Fiserv Forum.
A Fat Tuesday employee who only gave her first name, Destiny, says that the delegates stopping in will ask her who she’s voting for in November. She tells them, they order, and then they pay and tip.
“We made pretty good [money] yesterday on tips,” she says. “Our regulars, I think they’re just regular, so the experience they’re kind of used to it now. I don’t see as many tips as I would love to, so now that we’re seeing a lot of tips [it’s like], okay, this is nice.”
Destiny says she went from working the early shift to the midday shift in hopes of making additional money. And she’s hoping some of the crowd sticks around past the convention.
“Hopefully we keep some of these people as our regulars,” she says with a laugh.
But for businesses just a few blocks away like Doc’s Smokehouse, a financial windfall from the RNC is not happening. And that economic impact is real.
“I’ve got 60 employees [and] we offer company-paid healthcare,” Brent Brashier says. “Hindsight being 20/20, if today looks like yesterday, I would’ve been better giving everyone vacation and saying hey, let’s get back at it [after].”
While Brashier says that he thinks the RNC is good for the city by bringing additional attention, it’s not been good business. He says none of his friends or other businesses on Third Street are seeing big sales numbers. And in a business that has gotten tougher to manage post-COVID, where margins are tighter, losing a week’s worth of sales in the middle of summer is money that you don’t get back.
