Left behind : There’s plenty of elbow room in Bentonville when Wal-Mart migrates to Kansas City for the annual Year Beginning Meeting

By Jeff Mores Staff Writer // jeffm@nwanews.com

Posted on Wednesday, January 23, 2008

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BENTONVILLE — If you’ve noticed less congestion on local roadways and smaller lunch crowds at popular Bentonville restaurants this week, it’s not just because people are nervous about the icy roads.

Wal-Mart is holding its annual Year Beginning Meeting in Kansas City, Mo., this week. Just about any restaurant owner will tell you that has a bigger impact on business than weather ever has. As the week continues, more and more Wal-Mart executives, managers and other high-ups will continue loading onto buses, airplanes and cars to make the trek north to Kansas City.

“ It makes a huge difference, ” said Grub Christie, owner of Gusano’s Pizzeria, 2905 S. Walton Blvd. “ We normally see about a 40 percent drop (in business ) the whole week. It starts getting really thin as the week goes on, especially on Thursday and Friday. ”

Big Guy’s Subs, 900 S. W. A St., and Jimmy John’s, 805 S. Walton Blvd., serve as bookends to one of the main parking lots at the Wal-Mart Home Office, so seeing Wal-Mart badges clipped to the shirts of more than 60 percent of their customers is nothing out of the ordinary. But this week, even they see significant drops in traffic.

“ This is my first year owning this restaurant, so this is my first January, but I started wondering yesterday what was going on, ” Big Guy’s owner Christy Hooe said. “ Then someone mentioned a ton of Wal-Mart people are in Kansas City, and it started making sense. ”

A Jimmy John’s manager told The Daily Record that business is normally down 30 percent the week of the annual Kansas City meeting.

Management at Bentonville Butcher and Deli, 1201 S. Walton Blvd., said there’s always more room during the lunch rush when Wal-Mart heads to Kansas City.

“ The area we see it most is during lunch, ” manager Philip Moser said. “ A lot of office people come down here for lunch. We still have a lot of Wal-Mart vendors coming in, but there’s less badges around. I’d say they make up about half of our lunch crowd. ”

With fewer Wal-Mart associates at the Home Office, fewer vendors officed outside the region fly into Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport during this week. XNA management did not have the estimated passenger counts through the end of the week, but — since the airport opened in November 1998 — statistics show January has been among the slowest months of the year.

On the flip side, Kansas City’s economy experiences a big boost. At presstime, Wal-Mart had not provided an estimate of the number of associates traveling to Kansas City, but statistics kept by the Kansas City Convention and Visitors Association over the past several years tell the story.

According to Alan Carr, director of communications for the association, the Wal-Mart Year Beginning Meeting brings an average of 2, 570 hotel-room reservations. When taking restaurant visits, gas purchases, shopping and use of the Kansas City Convention Center into account, Carr estimates the week of Wal-Mart activities brings more than $ 8 million to Kansas City.

“ This is the second-largest convention in Kansas City in terms of the number of hotelroom nights, ” Carr said. “ The fact it happens in January is big because the winter is normally a slower time. ”

Not so in January in Kansas City.

“ When January comes around, we certainly know Wal-Mart is in town, ” said David Albrecht of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. “ It’s obvious. ”

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