CREDIT: MELANIE ANDERSON
Hasbeans staff got into the skating spirit with funky costumes.

The 2013 ISU World Figure Skating Championships, hosted by Budweiser Gardens saw more than 62,000 people through the doors from March 11 to 17.

The saleable capacity was 6,650 and the building experienced sell-outs on both March 16 sessions, as well as near sell-outs on March 14, 15 and the closing gala exhibition on March 17.

The traffic inside the building spread to surrounding restaurants and stores in the area.

Over 22,500 people visited the Light Up London fan festival at the Canadian Tire Family Zone and Skate Canada House outside the building.

With over 60 restaurants within a one-kilometre radius of Budweiser Gardens, there were some mixed reviews on how the event went as a whole.

“It was a little bit tricky to schedule because we were told before the event that this was gonna be crazy: ‘You're going to be lined up from 11 in the morning to 11 at night,'” said La Casa's head chef Scott Sanderson.

Joel McMillan, employee at Hasbeans gourmet coffee shop in the Covent Garden Market, agreed that at times business was difficult to anticipate, “It comes in surges, in between shows ... so it's just a surge of like 8,000 people slamming down on us,” he said.

McMillan, along with his fellow employees, really got into the spirit as they dressed up in figure skating costumes, boas and tiaras.

“Well, you know, the entire world's here — the entire world in London — so we decided to absorb some of that fire and make it go crazy,” enthused McMillan.

La Casa stayed open late to accommodate the crowds, “We did stay open a lot later than we usually do, and we did get a little extra business, but we didn't sell out at 11 o'clock at night, which people were saying was going to happen,” said Sanderson.

Sanderson stressed that all in all sales were good, especially because March Break is usually a slow week in the restaurant industry, but added that some restaurant owners were left unhappy.

“Definitely I know there are some restaurants just off the beaten path that were crying the blues and said they were disappointed because they hired all this extra staff. I know we didn't really see that many regulars at this end of town because you can talk to any restaurant, everyone was scared to come downtown because they thought parking was going to be an issue and it was gonna be crazy down here.”

Kendra Gordon-Green, owner of the Little Red Roaster chain sold coffee inside Budweiser Gardens as well as inside Convent Garden Market across the street.

She was very pleased with the customer traffic during the skating events. “Business has been amazing; we've quadrupled our business this week,” she said with a smile.

“We've been non-stop, I can't even put a number on it, but really on a normal week like this we've far exceed our expectations” she added.

Director of events at Skate Canada Jackie Stell-Buckingham was pleased with London's involvement overall.

“We had storefront windows decorated; everyone had a huge awareness coming to the city and had made provisions for things. Restaurants had named some of their menu items after skating moves and there were little contests running in some of the stores. It was just a huge community engagement in the event as a whole and that in itself made this event hugely different from other ones.”