Confirmed: New Yorkers Love Super Bowl Wings

By Hilary Sims

Thanks to busy schedules and tiny kitchens, New Yorkers aren't the most avid home cooks. Even on Super Bowl Sunday, a day when you can practically hear the nation’s stoves snapping to life in the name of football, many New Yorkers go the prepared-foods route. “Super Bowl Sunday is by far Westside Market NYC’s busiest shopping day of the year,” says CEO George Zoitas, who tells us that on game day they sell “huge quantities” of “classic football fare – chicken wings, pigs in a blanket, chips and dip, beer and soda.”

It’s no surprise that chicken wings are the big-ticket item. Zoitas reports that last year on Super Bowl Sunday, wing sales across their four locations clocked in at an impressive 1,500 pounds – the same amount that they sold in finger foods like pigs in a blanket, mini desserts, shrimp cocktail and crudités combined. Even by the market’s most conservative estimate, that amount of wings is sixfold what it sells on a regular day, which tops out around 250 pounds. What’s more, Westside tells us, they’re “on trend to sell the same amount this year.”

Despite the fact that the recent rumors of a wing shortage have largely been debunked, we don’t recommend taking your game-day menu for granted. Perfectly prepared drumettes are clearly in high demand; raw wings, on the other hand, are generally easier to come by, so you may want to include them in Super Bowl Backup Plan 2013. If there’s a run on prepared wings, cooking may be your only option. If it gets to that point, we’ve got you covered.