Tag Archive for: eric titus

Derby Wings Management Raises $140,000 for Down Syndrome Organization

Buffalo Wild Wings hosts an EWRF event the week before the golf tournament and invites people with Down syndrome to come to the restaurant and help raise awareness. Individuals with Down syndrome that become part of the B-Dubs crew for the day range from 4 years old to 25 years old.

Buffalo Wild Wings hosts an EWRF event the week before the golf tournament and invites people with Down syndrome to come to the restaurant and help raise awareness. Individuals with Down syndrome that become part of the B-Dubs crew for the day range from 4 years old to 25 years old.

In the summer of 2016, Derby Wings Management hosted the fourth annual golf scramble benefiting Angels in Disguise, a Down syndrome charity based in Louisville, Kentucky.

BWW® franchisee Eric Titus has held a golf scramble every year for nearly a decade but stopped when he began getting frustrated at the seemingly low funds the events were bringing in.

“At the end of the day, we would raise $10,000, which is great, but for the effort, I didn’t feel like we were getting the impact we wanted. I kind of stepped aside, and we took a few years off,” he said.

When his contact at the golf course approached him years later asking to form a partnership for a new charity his family had created, Titus was ready to give it another shot.

“They would always do a lot of stuff for Down syndrome awareness, but they finally decided to create their own charity here locally,” said Titus. “Because of the passion of the charity and the fundraising that they helped with, it was a totally different experience with Angels in Disguise.”

The duo moved the event to a different golf course, and this year roughly 220 people on 55 teams came out to show their support for the cause.

“It was a traditional golf scramble, but because of the passion of the charity, we raised a little over $140,000,” said Titus. That figure has been growing larger and larger each year.

To help raise funds, the golf scramble was held in conjunction with the Giddy Up Gala, a dinner event that took place the night before the golf tournament at Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby.

“This is sort of an appreciation night for people who may not necessarily be golfers,” said Titus.

The Giddy Up Gala, held the night before the golf scramble, takes place at Churchill Downs and is an opportunity for those who don’t golf to get involved with Angels in Disguise.

The Giddy Up Gala, held the night before the golf scramble, takes place at Churchill Downs and is an opportunity for those who don’t golf to get involved with Angels in Disguise.

The event includes a nice dinner, speakers who come to educate attendees on Down syndrome and various silent and live auctions. The fundraiser features hundreds of items to be auctioned off that range anywhere from a trip to Disney to a tour of a local winery or distillery.

Titus notes that Buffalo Wild Wings® donates auction items ranging from NASCAR tickets and paraphernalia to a Cincinnati Bengals game with access to the Miller Lite party deck.

While B-Dubs® isn’t heavily involved in the Giddy Up Gala, they are the primary sponsor for the golf scramble.

“We’re the ones who are actually out soliciting sponsorships and teams,” said Titus. “The day of the actual event, we’re really the ones who are executing it. I have a lot of my team members out there doing polls and registration and that kind of stuff.”

Buffalo Wild Wings also hosts an Eat Wing Raise Funds event the week before the golf tournament and invites people with Down syndrome to come to the restaurant and help raise awareness.

“We treat them like employees,” said Titus. “They come in, we give them uniforms, we schedule them for shift for a couple of hours, and as their families come in, they help serve them and greet them or whatever the case.”

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This year’s golf scramble for Angels in Disguise welcomed 220 people on 55 teams.

Individuals with Down syndrome that become part of the B-Dubs crew for the day range from 4 years old to 25 years old.

“Our big goal throughout this whole thing is not only raising money, but it’s mainly trying to break down barriers and stereotypes,” said Titus. “It is our intention that everyone involved with the event has the chance to interact with these angels because our whole role is to show that they are not strange human beings; they are some of the most wonderful people on the planet.”

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

Radio station Q103.1 sponsored Bikes or Bust, an event to collect bikes for Toys for Tots, in which radio personality Dingo stayed on a scissor lift for four days.

Radio station Q103.1 sponsored Bikes or Bust, an event to collect bikes for Toys for Tots, in which radio personality Dingo stayed on a scissor lift for four days.

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.

Bikes or Bust collected new bikes for Toys for Tots, which is a program cultivated by the U.S. Marine Corps.

Bikes or Bust collected new bikes for Toys for Tots, which is a program cultivated by the U.S. Marine Corps.

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.

The inaugural Bikes or Bust event collected over 2,000 bikes. The initial goal prior to the event starting was 41.

The inaugural Bikes or Bust event collected over 2,000 bikes. The initial goal prior to the event starting was 41.

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.”