A Canadian sports bar chain known for its massive TV screens and elevated food menu is expanding south of the border.
Shark Club last month opened its second U.S. location, in Northlake, Texas. The first opened in nearby Plano in 2019.
The Northlake location is part of the Children's Health StarCenter, a large sports complex operated by the Dallas Stars hockey team. Stars owner Tom Gaglardi is also CEO of Vancouver-based Northland Properties, which owns Shark Club and a number of other hotel and restaurant brands, including Moxies, another chain making inroads in the U.S.
Founded in 1993, Shark Club opened its first bar in Vancouver, in the lower level of the Northland-owned Sandman Hotel. In 2013, Northland acquired Shark Club and has expanded it to 11 locations in Canada and two each in the U.S. and U.K.
The company sees an opportunity here for a sports bar concept that “bridges the gap between a sports bar and upscale, polished-casual dining,” said Alan Howie, president and COO of Northland’s restaurant division.
Shark Clubs have chefs in the kitchen, Howie said. The menu includes classic bar food like burgers, fries, and wings, as well as less typical items, such as jambalaya, steak frites, and butter chicken.
“The most popular items are wings, burgers, an fries,” Howie said, “but the entrée section is pretty advanced and changing all the time.”
Wings are top sellers at Shark Club. | Photo courtesy of Shark Club
Shark Club aims to pair that food with a first-class sports-fan environment. The 5,000-square-foot venue in Northlake, for instance, has 37 TVs for “large-format” viewing. Some of them are outdoors, on a large patio that overlooks the complex’s pickleball courts.
Shark Club also operates a counter-service outpost at the Children’s Health StarCenter called Shark Shak offering burgers, fries, shakes, and coffee for grab-and-go.
Sports bar concepts struggled last year. Sales fell 0.2% at sports bar chains on Technomic’s Top 500, a ranking of the 500 largest U.S restaurant chains. But Howie said there is still a real demand to go out and watch sports in a crowd.
“It's like, why haven't pubs gone away in the U.K. and Ireland?” he said. “They are the third place. They're the gathering place. So, people have a craving for places to connect with people.”
That was on display during this summer’s World Cup, when Shark Club, along with many other restaurants and bars, saw a nice boost in sales.
Still, Shark Club is being deliberate about its U.S. growth, and is looking to match the right location with the right brand. Besides Shark Club and Moxies, it also operates Tavern (like Shark Club, without the sports bar) and Chop Steakhouse.
Currently, both U.S. Shark Clubs are located within a Northland-affiliated property — the sports complex and a Sandman hotel in Plano. But the company isn’t limiting the brand to those sorts of sites, and most Northland restaurants are stand-alones.
“When we find the right real estate, we choose the right brand that we think will fit that market, and that demographic,” Howie said. “We're very bullish on restaurants in the United States, in particular, states like Texas and Florida and Arizona.”
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