While the Seattle Seahawks won Super Bowl LX, the Emerald City’s businesses won Wednesday during the World Champions Parade.
Downtown Seattle began buzzing Wednesday morning ahead of the pre-parade trophy celebration at Lumen Field. Before the events kicked off, local businesses catered to heaps of fans in blue and green Seahawks gear.
Jess Heitmann, manager of the Uptown Espresso along Fourth Avenue in the city’s Belltown neighborhood, normally shows up at 5:30 a.m. and serves her first customer around 6 or 6:30. On Wednesday, when she arrived at 4:30 a.m., about 30 people were waiting at the coffee shop’s door.
“The second I opened, I had a line to the back of the wall,” Heitmann said.
Always a popular shop, Heitmann said business exploded Wednesday. By early afternoon, her payment system said they had already done 433% of the sales they did on Tuesday.
“And we don’t close until 6 p.m.,” she said around 1 p.m.
Heitmann and her crew aren’t strangers to crowds. Seattle Pride passes by every year. But she gets three months to prepare for that. For the Seahawks parade, she had a 36-hour turnaround to make sure the business was stocked.
“We overordered on beans, so, thankfully, we’re safe there,” she said. “But I will have to make an emergency order for pastries tomorrow.”
At the Starbucks coffeehouse on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Westlake Avenue, dozens of 12s queued for caffeine. Sheltering from the morning chill, the clientele almost exclusively wore Hawks scarves and hats or held signs that read, “2025 World Champions.”
Behind the counter, five baristas in jerseys resembled a small football team, completing orders the way Seattle’s NFL athletes completed plays this season.
Outside, customer Jolene Goodson sat at a table with Scott Newsome, who unwrapped a muffin.
“It’s very exciting,” said Goodson, a Kirkland resident. “It took five trains to get down here. There are so many more people. I had a million in my mind, so I was kind of prepared for the crowd.”
Laura Mitchell, owner of Young Flowers at 1907 4th Ave., wasn’t surprised by the turnout downtown. She worked in the area during the last Super Bowl championship parade in 2014.
On the sidewalk, employee Jacob Weisblatt manned a table selling blue and green bouquets to passersby.
“We figured a million people walking by. Why not show them what we do?” said Mitchell, 44.
As a Seahawks fan, she depicted herself as “super stoked.” As a flower shop owner who’s in a time crunch before Valentine’s Day this weekend, Mitchell admitted the parade was slightly disruptive for her business.
“But we just roll with the punches,” she added.
Employees of Cannonball Arts, 1930 3rd Ave., invited kids to mark up their contemporary arts center’s windows with removable paint markers. The building once housed a Bed Bath & Beyond store.
They took the opportunity to discuss this year’s Bumbershoot Arts & Music Festival, scheduled for Labor Day weekend, with 12s who paused at the painting opportunity. Cannonball Arts was created by Bumbershoot affiliates and the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe.
Standing in front of a large sheet of glass, a boy tried his best to draw the head of a seahawk.
Vendors cash in
It wasn’t just Seattle’s established businesses cashing in on the festivities.
Along the parade route, roughly every other block or so, the smell of bacon-wrapped hot dogs filled the air, and throngs of customers in need of last-minute gear crowded tables full of knockoff “Seahawks” merch.
Most Read Business Stories
One vendor told The Seattle Times that he’d traveled from Rhode Island to peddle T-shirts and sweatshirts.
Another in a baby blue Mariners jacket chatted with potential customers eyeing piles of Seattle bucket hats and beanies stacked on a folding table. Catty-corner, a 12s flag waved in the breeze atop a white canopy tent. Shirts for sale hung from laundry lines underneath it.
There, Carlos Castro, 19, bought a pink T-shirt that read, “2025-2026 Champions,” for his girlfriend. The Seattle resident said his girlfriend doesn’t have any gear yet, and he plans to gift it to her later.
Occasionally, the cry of “$5 beer” resounded as hawkers rolled coolers filled with Modelo, Coors Light and the occasional Jell-O shot.
When buses and trucks filled with Seahawks players, past and present, rolled by, businesses in Belltown emptied, with patrons streaming out to lock their eyes on the Super Bowl champs. Employees and even managers stood in the doorways as the parade passed.
But the end of the event didn’t mean business slowed. Afterward, crowds of Seahawks fans trudged up Capitol Hill in search of sustenance.
A dozen 12s waited for burgers and fries outside the walk-up window of Double O’ Burgers on Pine Street. Nearby, the line for a table at Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya stretched out its front door.
Seattle’s streets continued to hum with ecstasy. As restaurant Fogón Cocina Mexicana transformed into an afternoon party, would-be customers waited patiently, soaking up the rare February sun and — rarer still — the Super Bowl win.
Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton: 206-652-6373 or mboyanton@seattletimes.com: Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton is a business reporter at The Seattle Times.
Alex Halverson: 206-652-6352 or ahalverson@seattletimes.com: Alex Halverson is a tech reporter at The Seattle Times, where he covers some of the region’s largest employers, including Amazon and Microsoft.