For months, businesses around MetLife Stadium were told that the World Cup would deliver a windfall of hungry, free-spending visitors. Instead, some of the restaurants and hotels closest to the action say that boom never arrived, and that match days have actually been driving customers away rather than bringing them in. For a handful of long-standing local spots, the tournament has turned into a bust.
Few places capture that disappointment better than Steve's Sizzling Steaks in Carlstadt, New Jersey, a landmark restaurant just five minutes from MetLife Stadium on Route 17. The steakhouse has been around since 1936, with an old phone booth inside to prove it and walls plastered with autographed photos of New York Giants greats like Michael Strahan and Bill Parcells. On a typical night, the dining room is packed and the grills are sizzling.
On World Cup match days, however, the restaurant has looked like a ghost town. The manager says business has been down by about 60% whenever there is a game at the stadium, and the slump has been severe enough that the restaurant is now cutting staff on days when World Cup action is scheduled nearby. What was supposed to be the busiest stretch of the year has become one of the quietest.
Much of the problem appears to come down to traffic. Route 17, which normally roars like a racetrack outside the restaurant's front door, has emptied out during matches as the state Department of Transportation issues gridlock alerts urging drivers to stay away from certain roads around the stadium. The warnings have worked so well that would-be diners are steering clear of the entire area on game days.
To try to win customers back, the restaurant has even set up a webcam that livestreams its parking lot on its website, hoping to convince patrons that there is plenty of room and no traffic to fight once they actually arrive. It is an unusual workaround for a business that, on most days, has no trouble filling its tables.
Staff at the restaurant say they sensed the letdown coming even before the first whistle. They approached nearby hotels, offering to leave menus for the influx of new visitors they had been promised, only to be told that the hotels themselves were running at just 40% capacity. For the businesses that ring MetLife Stadium, the gap between the hype and the reality has been hard to swallow.