A handful of Denver restaurants and bars are hoping cool cats crooning classic tunes will heat up their summer business – by drawing in aging baby boomers and their dollars.
They’re promoting after-work events that finish near sundown to appeal to busy professionals. So far, it’s paying off.
The J.W. Marriott hotel in Cherry Creek North ignited the craze in April when it booked Frank Sinatra impersonator Danny Wein into its lounge Thursdays from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. The move “has had a major impact on our revenues,” said spokeswoman Sheri Heedum.
The “Chairman of the Board” show has been so popular that the J.W. Marriott is adding a Friday night show, featuring Tony Bennett impersonator Tony James. The show opens in the coming week.
The hotel has carved just one slice of a lucrative pie.
Metro Denver has the nation’s highest percentage of big-spending baby boomers, according to Scarborough Reports. Nearly half – 42.7 percent – of metro- Denver adults fall between ages 35 and 54, and earn, on average, more than $91,000 a year.
The real challenge is getting them out of their offices and into the audience before they head home to the suburbs. Nearly half say they dined out in the past week, but only one of every four say they have been to a nightclub within the past year.
“We’ll probably be home by 9, and that’s a late night for us on a Thursday,” said Valdon Erpelding, a middle-age Washington Park resident who was enjoying the Sinatra show with his wife. “We don’t burn the candle at both ends anymore.”
The Inn at Cherry Creek, a boutique hotel that opened in January, is hoping torch singer Lannie Garrett will keep boomers awake and in town with an 8 p.m. Friday cabaret show, starting this coming week.
The strategy is working, said Peter Weber, who owns the inn with his wife. They’ve already sold out the opening show.
“This was such a natural fit for us,” Weber said, adding that Garrett has a huge middle-age fan base, “and they’re absolutely who we want coming into the restaurant and the inn.”
Elway’s at Cherry Creek Shopping Center is also trying to pick off a piece of the affluent market by staging free open-air, after- hours concerts. The steakhouse’s “Music on the Patio” series, from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesdays, is meant to showcase the restaurant as a drop-by destination for commuters.
“It’s for people who have just gotten off work and want to stop in and be entertained for a little bit,” said Tom Moxcey, general manager at Elway’s. “There are a lot of people who work around here and then migrate south. We’re not looking for the gang that comes back downtown at 10 p.m. to go to clubs.”
Several downtown venues have the same goal, using live music to entice businesspeople to stay an extra hour or two before they head home.
“We’re definitely trying to capture people on their way home,” said Lora Lefevre, general manager of Maggiano’s. The downtown restaurant offers live Latin jazz from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays throughout the summer.
On Thursdays from 5 to 9 p.m., the Denver Pavilions plans to draw 3,500 to 4,500 music fans to its open-air “Hot Sounds in the City” concerts.
The shows are staged primarily for downtown office workers, said Pavilions marketing director Bethany Garner, because “they’re the folks who shop here, dine here, park here. They’re your people with higher disposable incomes.”
And when the music ends, business owners expect the boomers to head for their beds.
“When you’re 25 years old, you want to party hard until the wee hours of the morning,” said Denver restaurant consultant John Imbergamo. “But when you’re 45 and have a big breakfast meeting with your boss at 7:30 a.m., you want to be nighty-night by 10.”
Staff writer Julie Dunn can be reached at 303-820-1592 or jdunn@denverpost.com.
