Behind the Scenes with P.J. Whelihan’s at WIP Wing Bowl 2017
Video, story by Whitney Ullman
Every year for 10 years, P.J. Whelihan’s supplies the much anticipated Philadelphia’s WIP Wing Bowl at the Wells Fargo Center with 10,000 wings, and we had a chance to go behind the scenes to see how it’s all prepared and packaged.
Check out this rundown of “fowl” facts and figures:
- 10,000: Wings prepared by P.J. Whelihan’s for the annual WIP Wing Bowl competition, held Friday, February 3 in Philadelphia. 10,000 wings are enough to circle the Wells Fargo Center hockey arena (host of Wing Bowl) 16.5 times or line 8.81 football fields.
- 122,660: Number of wings served by P.J. Whelihan’s on Super Bowl Sunday in 2016. Money is on number of wings sold for Super Bowl LI to reach 125,000.
- 1.33 billion: The number of chicken wings Americans will devour this coming Sunday, per the National Chicken Council. That’s a 2% increase (30 million wings) over last year’s estimated wing consumption.
- 75,000: Wings are sold every Tuesday, the weekly half price wing night celebration, at all 14 P.J. Whelihan’s. That’s 10,546 pounds, or 5 tons of wings every Tuesday – equal to the weight of 1,500 Vince Lombardi trophies.
- 11: Number of sauces P.J. Whelihan’s offers to dress their wings…for now. (Stay tuned for exciting wing sauce announcements that will be sure to please P.J. Whelihan’s fans in 2017.)
- 10 million: The number of chicken wings P.J. Whelihan’s used in 2016.
- 19: Total number of restaurants operated by P.J.W. Restaurant Group with more on the way and not a single closure in 30+ years.
- 1993: The year the first P.J. Whelihan’s opened in Allentown, PA thus kicking off two-plus decades of wing mastery.
Although we couldn’t make it to the festivities, we want to congratulate winner Bob “Notorious B.O.B.” Shoudt for winning Wing Bowl 25 by eating 409 wings! Check out some photos from fellow photographer and friendly paparazzi Hugh E. Dillion of PhillyChitChat.com too.
