There has been an increasingly popular trend of Bottomless Mimosa Sundays at local restaurants and bars in San Luis Obispo, and we wanted to get to the bottom of why this trend is happening, and more specifically, how it effecting local businesses in SLO.
“I got really stoked on choosing this topic for our project because there is clearly a trend of students going to Bottomless, and we wanted to get to the bottom of it,” says JB Garcia.
One of our first interests in the project was to see if there was a correlation between the recent ban on two-for-ones downtown, and the new trend of Bottomless Mimosa Sundays. The ban took effect a few weeks ago, and was a unanimous decision among all bar owners downtown. Bottomless Sundays have yet to have any bans, but some local restaurants such as Charlie’s Place have strict ‘Bottomless Mimosa’ rules that customers must follow.
Our first step was to collect data on which bars and restaurants offered deals on Sunday for Bottomless Mimosas. Five local business downtown partake in this bubbly event: Libertine, Charlie’s Place, Blast 825 Taproom, SLO Brew and Mother’s Tavern. We called up the managers of each business to get more insight into why this trend is really happening, who this trend targets and how it effects their businesses.
Charlie’s Place, Jeffrey Bloom Photography
Charlie’s Place was the first restaurant to bring Bottomless Mimosas to San Luis Obispo in 2012, and noticed an increase in revenue immediately. “We’ve always been busy on Sundays for breakfast, but once we added bottomless, people came in giant groups with their friends to celebrate the deals,” says Charlie’s Place Manager Cecilia Gonzalez. Charlie’s Place offers $12 bottomless mimosas from 10am to 2pm.
Next, we checked out Libertine Brewery, a new restaurant and bar in downtown SLO. Libertine has also noticed a direct increase in business on Sundays due to Bottomless Mimosas. They offer Bottomless Mimosas and brunch for $22 every Sunday. “Students seem to really like Bottomless Sundays so they can drink with their friends for cheaper,” says Libertine’s bartender Eli Perrett.
SLO Brew has noticed the recent trend among students, and added Bottomless to their event schedule on Sundays as a result. “It’s definitely a new trend, and Sundays are packed because of it,” said SLO Brew bartender Erin Kleeman. .
Blast 825 Taproom wanted in on the bubbly action as well. “Bottomless Sundays are so fun, we get a lot of people through the doors!” said Blast Manager.
Mother’s Tavern was the second restaurant to partake in the event, and has lines out the door every Sunday morning. “It starts at 10 and ends at 2 and is crazy in between,” says Mother’s Tavern bar manager.
After posting on various social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, our team gathered data on the target audience of who really participates in Bottomless Sundays: students. “Students are looking for cheap and fun deals they can afford, while they can have fun with their friends drinking,” says Samantha Siegal.
This project was really fun to work on because we were able to work as a team and research the impact on local businesses. Our communication was fantastic and it made it much easier to get everything done. Brian Robbins says, “I enjoyed working on the project because I always assumed bottomless was growing in SLO, but to hear the employees at the various restaurants talk about how crowded bottomless gets now and all the things that happen behind the scenes was very cool.”