This Super Bowl, you can get wings for chicken feed

At Moriarty's Pub on Walnut Street, they have two guys just cutting celery and carrots into sticks for three days before the big day.

At Wings to Go on Castor Avenue in Rhawnhurst, the line for to-go orders will start at noon.

And at Chickie's & Pete's on Packer Avenue in South Philadelphia, they will be hard pressed to restock the wing fryers after hosting the hectic Wing Bowl weigh-in Thursday night.

Every year on Super Bowl Sunday, wing fever hits its peak. Moriarty's alone says it will sell a ton. Nationally, it is the biggest wing-eating day of the year, with 100 million pounds of wings hitting plates at parties and bars around the country.

As surely as the price for long-stemmed roses shoots skyward before Valentine's Day and the tab for unleaded rises in the summertime, chicken wings cost more in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl.

The price spike has followed tradition since a Buffalo restaurant's technique of frying the traditional cast-offs and slathering them in hot sauce and butter spread to restaurant chains such as Domino's 20 years ago.

But something is afoul this year in wing world.

There has been no run-up. Prices are down. Way down. Your corner-bar owner is paying $1 to $2 a pound - depending on the quality and type - and that is 75 cents a pound less than he paid last year.

"Last year left a bad taste in the mouths of many customers," said Warren Dunn, commodity sales manager for Hain Pure Protein, a mammoth poultry processor in Fredericksburg, Lebanon County, which sells antibiotic-free chicken under the brand name Freebird.

The economy whipped the food business in 2009, and chicken was no exception. As consumer spending sagged, restaurants ordered fewer boneless breasts and the wholesale prices for that premium product dropped significantly. But demand for wings - particularly fueled by wing-based restaurant chains - remained strong. For much of 2009, the wholesale price of wings was actually higher than that of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, according to Dunn.

By the 2010 Super Bowl, with the wholesale price nudging $1.72 a pound, some budget-sensitive restaurateurs ditched wings altogether. They bought the cheaper breast "trimmings," deep-fried and sauced them, and sold them as "boneless wings," said Brian Chick, sales manager for Charles Ritter Inc., a South Philadelphia wholesaler. Chick got his start in the bird biz working for Frank Perdue. ("How did we get you?" Chick said Perdue would say, teasing him about his surname. "I would answer, 'I was hatched.' ")

With restaurant spending on an upswing, poultry production has increased. Demand and prices for chicken breasts have risen, while wings have become cheaper. January's wing wholesale price for the Northeastern United States was 93 cents, according to Urner Barry Publications, of Toms River, N.J., whose analysts report on commodities pricing.

An estimated 1.25 billion wing portions - 100 million pounds - are expected to be served Sunday alone, according to the National Chicken Council.

Just as upscale-restaurant owners know they'll be quiet, some bar owners dismiss Super Bowl Sunday, too. "It's more of a home-party thing - unless your team is in it," said Pete Ciarrocchi, who owns the Chickie's & Pete's chain.

But it's a wild day for Jim Fris, chief operating officer of the PJW Restaurant Group, which operates the PJ Whelihan's pub chain. Fris said he ordered 100,000 jumbo wings for Sunday, one-tenth of the annual sale of one million wings at 11 locations. (Whelihan's provides smaller wings to WIP's Wing Bowl, which is Friday.)

Fris is at a loss to explain why the Whelihan's location in Allentown, one of his smallest stores, is the wing champ. He plans to sell 20,000 wings on Super Bowl Sunday - so many that he will park a refrigerated tractor-trailer full of wings outside because the in-house coolers are too small.

Not that he is complaining. At 10 wings for $8.99, that's a lot of scratch.