Playoff games are to be taken seriously. How seriously? Enough for an entire restaurant to ban one particular food item.
Primanti Brothers, a Pittsburgh institution since 1933 best known for putting fries and coleslaw on everything, is banning all fish sales in anticipation for the Steelers’ AFC Wild Card Weekend matchup against the Dolphins. There is one problem though – a dolphin isn’t a fish, it’s a mammal.
While the semantics of where a dolphin falls in the animal kingdom may be annoying to some, the real reason for Primanti’s to ban fish this weekend is to get some free marketing ahead of the big game.
Toni Haggerty, a long-time employee of the Strip District location of Primanti’s, had this to say about the ban.
“We’ve been trying to think of what we could do for the team and then we realized it’s more about what we shouldn’t do, and that’s support anything that comes from the ocean.”
The restaurant also confirmed that they are aware dolphins aren’t fish and were instead banning anything with a fin.
“We know that a dolphin is a mammal, but we’re just hoping people have fun with this,” says marketing director Ryan Wilkinson. “We’re banning anything with a fin.”
In addition to the ban, the restaurant is asking for people to tag all of their social media posts at the store with #NoFishFriday. People who use the hashtag will win gift certificates and other gifts at random throughout the weekend.
If you’re in the Steel City, this may pique your interest. For the rest of the United States this will surely be met with a collective shrug. But hey, anything to market a sandwich, right?
If the Steelers end up playing the Falcons or Seahawks in the Super Bowl, will Primanti’s end up banning chicken, or hell, “anything with wings”?
