One thing Oshkosh knows well is bars – especially dive bars. That’s why it’s no surprise that one of our own, Peter Haferman of Pete’s Garage Bar in downtown Oshkosh won #1 Dive Bar nationwide this past month.
“I thought it was great when we won, and it was a lot of fun,” Haferman said. “We were winning by so much the entire time that it just didn’t feel like we ever had a chance of losing,”
Pete’s Garage beat over 120 bars in this “March Dive-ness” tournament ran by Dive Bar Road Trip, an organization committed to traveling cross-country to find cool dive bars.
The tournament is a March Madness style competition determined by the public via Facebook votes.
“Seeing all the shares of the final results and seeing all the Pete’s logos scroll on my Facebook feed because people were sharing the results was pretty awesome,” he said.
Ironically, Haferman said he had no idea about the competition until somebody else nominated them for it.
“The guy tagged me on Facebook and goes, ‘hey, you’re in,’” Haferman said. “[That round] we got like 17,000 votes or something like that, so I was like ‘well, I guess we’re going to just roll with this thing and have at her.’”
The votes only grew from there, and Haferman left with a lot more than the number one spot.
“It’s hard to put a number on what you get for advertising, but I would be shocked if we didn’t get $10,000 worth of advertising [from the tournament],” he said.
Beyond providing visibility for his business, it also made it visible to him what the true victory was.
“It’s a pretty great feeling, not that we won this thing, but the fact that people support us so much.” Haferman said. “The support and the sheer craziness of the people that follow us outweigh the victory in my eyes.”
