How Busy Were Bars Thanksgiving Weekend?

Our web poll for this week posted the question: Was your Thanksgiving Eve reveune better than last year? Have you answered? If not, scroll to the bottom of our homepage and do so. Otherwise, check out the info below from the folks at Square, who were wondering the same thing.

It is widely believed that Thanksgiving Eve is the biggest drinking night of the year, so the people at Square took a look at data from bars and clubs to see whether it’s true.

Specifically, they looked at the transaction volume at bars using Square the day before Thanksgiving, and compared it to the Wednesday the week prior. They also broke down the data by specific states, and took a look at how busy bars were the rest of the Thanksgiving week.

A few highlights:
* This Thanksgiving Eve, bars saw a 36% increase in the number of transactions made compared to the week before.

* New York saw a 69% increase in the number of transactions at bars this year on Thanksgiving Eve compared to the week before.

* This year bars on Thanksgiving Day still saw 78% of the transaction volume compared to the Thursday a week earlier (down 22% from the Thursday a week before, but guess Thanksgiving Day football games brought people out to the bars despite the lure of family time at home).

* Friday had a 36% drop off in bar transactions compared to the previous week, sharper week over week decline than Thanksgiving Day.  

The state-by-state breakdown for Thanksgiving Eve is below.

Wednesday before Thanksgiving compared to week before, state by state – The states in each region with the biggest transaction increases:

* California bars: 27.96% increase.

* Colorado bars: 57.23% increase.

* Florida bars: 29.54% increase.

* New York bars: 69.11% increase.

* Texas bars: 31.86% increase.