Ask many restaurant owners in B.C. how they feel about hockey and you’ll be greeted with high praise. For many, there’s nothing better than taking in a game with beers and bar food and friends.
But for others, it’s a good reason to stay home, as a loud play-by-play of a game you don’t care about doesn’t exactly make a meal taste any better.
For us at Fray, we recently faced our big decision on hockey broadcasts – to show or no?
On the one side, we know Frasertonians are as big lovers of hockey as anyone else, and there’s a dearth of local places to catch the game while socializing.
On the other side, we’ve all tried to eat at places where there are so many TVs on that conversation becomes difficult, and the noise becomes overwhelming.
So here’s what we’re thinking for hockey games: We’re going to show Canucks games on the TV over the bar. It’s a big TV that can be seen from nearly everywhere, if you try. And we’ll pipe the play-by-play into the restaurant, because what’s a game without game sound?
But we’ll keep it low.
In the weeks ahead, we’re going to spend a little money setting up a bar-only sound system so one side of the room can watch the game while the other can eat and chat without distraction. But until that time, please be aware that we’re doing our best to please as many people as possible, and if a (low volume) hockey call will be too much for you to handle, maybe check the schedule before coming out.
If we find there’s a majority of people on one side or the other of this debate, we’ll swing things more in their direction, but we think this is the best solution to the problem right now.
Until playoff time… that’s when we’ll pump the sound up and let the (potato) chips fall where they may.