Pints and meat: The Wharfie Time effect on Freo’s pubs and WA butchers

What does 40,000 rowdy Dockers supporters flowing into the usually laid-back port city of Fremantle mean for one of its biggest pubs?

Gage Roads at the A-Shed overlooking the working port has done the math and the estimates are eye watering.

Gage Roads owner Good Drinks Australia’s head of hospitality Miles Hull said they will sell about 1200 serves (or half a tonne) of chips, 1500 pizzas and 7000 pints – 2000 of which they expect will be their Purple Reign beer brewed especially for these finals.

Hull said not only would a blowout over the Lions be the best for the town, but it would also be the best for sales.

“If it’s a nail-biter, no one wants to leave their seat or take their eyes off the game and people are caught up in the moment of the game and so it goes quiet at the bar,” he said.

“On [the Friday of the elimination final against Geelong] you could track the state of the game by the bar sales.

“The beer sales were really strong, but they slowed down in that last quarter and then picked up at the end of the game.

“You could see that people were not as engaged halfway through the match because Freo were trailing and people found themselves a bit more time to get to the bar, but in the fourth quarter it was a different story. At least until after the game.”

Police, the City of Fremantle and the state government are expecting a huge number of people to come to Fremantle to watch the game and party afterwards, with road closures in place in the CBD and four massive screens set up.

A sold-out event is also being held at the Dockers’ spiritual home of South Fremantle Oval with thousands expected to attend.

Karl Bullers, the owner of Fremantle institutions the Old Court House and the National Hotel, said he was expecting triple the normal Saturday sales.

“People are just starting to realise just how big this is going to be, so we are over-ordering on everything because the last thing we want to be doing is run out of anything,” he said.

Bullers has a ticketed event at the National, which sold out immediately. He said his pubs had been receiving calls asking whether they could camp out at 5.30am to secure a spot in front of their screens.

For those unable to get to Melbourne or want to avoid the chaos in Fremantle the humble backyard barbecue is shaping up as a popular choice.

Butchers across the state have already reported an uptick in sales with most doing some form of purple sausage to commemorate the Dockers’ historic second grand final appearance.

Tony Scarfo of Scarfos Meating Place in Myaree, east of Fremantle, has again whipped out the purple food colouring and expects to sell up to half a tonne of purple sausage by Saturday afternoon.

“Over a week, you could push probably 400 to 500 kilos of actual purple ones,” he said. Scarfos became famous for the purple sausages back in 2013 ahead of the Dockers’ first grand final.

They were devised through trial and error, but are simply barbecue beef sausages dipped in purple food colouring and water.

Scarfo said he expects his trade to be up 30 per cent on a normal week.

Willetton butcher Nick Thomson expects his sales to pick up by about 20 per cent.

Thomson is an Essendon fan, but most of his team are Dockers mad and have come up with a purple and white chicken and cheese sausage.

Regionally, butcher shops are also experiencing a finals rush.

Plantagenet Meats owner Josh Liebeck also sold purple sausages back in 2013, but it didn’t quite work.

“We didn’t do the right sausage and we didn’t get the colours right so they went this horrible green colour,” he said.

Liebeck added that they have now mastered the purple chicken sausage and expects sales could double over Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

“It’s been a character building 32 years. Hopefully, we can come away with a win,” the long-suffering Dockers fan said.

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