Derby Wings Management Partners with Louisville Radio Station to Collect Over 2,000 Bikes for Toys for Tots

From Nov. 17-21, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, came together to help out Toys for Tots, and Buffalo Wild Wings^® wasn’t going to miss out on the fun. A local radio station, Q103.1, partnered with Sullivan University on the inaugural Bikes or Bust, which donates new bikes to Toys for Tots.

Radio personality Dingo agreed to spend over four consecutive days on a scissor lift parked in a Buffalo Wild Wings parking lot, and the Derby Wings Management location agreed to be the official location sponsor. The event encouraged anyone and everyone to visit the BWW^® location to drop off a donation, and Dingo greeted those who stopped by from 40 feet in the air.

Dingo was outfitted with a tent and other necessities and would update the community on the event via videos posted to social media.

“I actually approached the radio station, ironically, for another restaurant,” said franchisee Eric Titus. “I had told them I was looking for some kind of traffic-driving promotion, and they had come to me with several different things that I just didn’t like and didn’t think would work. Then they brought this up, and from the community connectivity aspect, I liked it and thought there could be some traffic-driving elements to it.”

The B-Dubs^® location at 10206 Westport Road provided roughly 13 spaces to the radio station where they could park the scissor lift and collect bikes. The company originally planned to only use half of the space but ended up using it all.

“The majority of our parking is in back, plus we have an easement with the shopping center that’s next to us, so there really is a lot of parking,” said Titus. “It didn’t hurt us that much, but we ended up taking up more space than we originally planned, mainly because of the amount of bikes that were donated.”

An amount that far exceeded the original goal. When the event was first created, a goal was set to donate 41 bikes to Toys for Tots because that was the projected need from the organization.

“We realized quickly, however, that there was a lot of people out there that wanted to donate bikes, so we adjusted our goal to 700,” said Titus.

One of those people wanting to provide for the cause was country music icon Garth Brooks, who called into the radio station on the second day of the event and said he would donate 10 bikes for every hour Dingo stayed in the lift. For the 103 hours Dingo spent hoisted in the air, Brooks donated 1,030 bikes to the program. 

“I was shocked, I was elated, and then I started realizing that what we were doing was bigger than we originally thought,” said Titus. “With Garth getting involved, all of a sudden there was a national element to it, which was really exciting.”

Titus notes that Brooks is currently on tour and has an upcoming show in Cincinnati, which is about one and a half hours away from Louisville.

“He appeared on their radio station to talk about his show, and through that process, he heard about what we were doing,” said Titus. “Obviously it must have struck a chord with him because he came out and said he wanted to get involved.”

With the substantial donation from Brooks, the team once again readjusted their goal – this time to 2,000 bikes.

“The generosity of our guests was really striking,” added Titus. “The bikes in the front were causing quite a stir in the community. So many people were driving by just to look at it, and then they would stop and ask us what was going on. It was really moving to see how much the community appreciated what we were doing.”

B-Dubs customers also showed the same sentiment with many stating that they didn’t have time to go buy a bike but donated money nonetheless.

“The thing that really struck me the most was that I had person after person thanking me and just coming up and saying how wonderful they thought what we were doing was,” said Titus.

At the end of the 103 hours, the event had surpassed its goal of 2,000 bikes, and Buffalo Wild Wings saw an increase in revenue due to the fundraiser.

“If I were to speculate based on the sales we did, what we usually do and what my other stores did that week in comparison, with this promotion we saw about a 6 percent sales lift over the four days,” said Titus. “Lunch sales were up 23 percent on Monday.” That is when Dingo came down from the lift and many of the people involved celebrated with a B-Dubs lunch.

Titus admits that planning the event could have went more smoothly, but the end result was still amazing.

“When they first approached me, I didn’t realize that they wanted to set the lift up in our parking lot,” he said. “Literally, at the eleventh hour, I ended up moving it over to our Westport Road location because I could envision that a little more comfortably. The restaurant I wanted to do it at didn’t really have the room, and we had some issues with the sloping of the parking spots for the lift.”

Another word of caution for the event in the coming years, Titus says, is to notify retailers who sell bikes.

“Because of what we did, we sold out Meijer, Target and Wal-Mart on the east end,” he said. “This is the first time anything like this has been done in our market, but now I know I should probably give them a heads up. Nobody expected that kind of impact.”

Aside from the initial planning, everything else was handled by the U.S. Marines and the radio station. Several Marines even stood guard from the time the restaurant closed until the following morning.

“We did have our managers out there floating around and interacting with people who were donating bikes,” said Titus. The location also held an Eat Wings Raise Funds event the day before Bikes or Bust started and was able to raise $532.

Titus said this was the first time that BWW has done a major partnership with Q103.1, but he looks forward to making Bikes or Bust an annual event.

“We’d like to involve all BWWs in Louisville possibly,” he said. “We had a debrief at the end of the event, and we were already talking about next year and what we could do. I expect to take this next year and really run with it.”