KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — Ahead of both University of Tennessee basketball teams appearing in the Sweet 16 round of March Madness this week, Knoxville businesses are preparing to handle an uptake in customers.

Kala Dorst with Walk-On’s Sports Bistreaux said they are already seeing more business thanks to the tournament.

“Especially over this past weekend, it was honestly almost record numbers for us,” Dorst said.

She also said they are making sure they will be fully staffed during the UT games.

“We’ve definitely beefed up the amount of servers and bartenders we’ll have on hand, even our kitchen is going to be pretty full,” she added.

The service industry is not the only one that will be impacted by Tennessee’s appearance at this stage of the tournament. Jesse Thomason with HoundDogs, which specializes in Vols merchandise, said they have already seen a spike in business.

“Monday was a busier Monday than we’re used to, especially during this time of year, and it’s been good. We’ve had a lot of people, a lot of customers coming in so it’s been nice,” he said.

Thomason said the extra business was a pleasant surprise.

“It’s definitely been some business that wasn’t really expected, I mean Duke is a really good team and we knew they were going to have to fight hard to play out of the game,” he said. “So, it was kind of a coin toss, on how it was going to be this week but with that win, we’ve seen a lot of people coming in, getting excited.”

He said they are already prepping for the possibility of either team making the Final Four.

“In situations like this with this post-season stuff, there’s a lot of work that goes on in the background, of being prepared for if they make a Final Four. You have to have those orders in because those have to ship that next day, and working out logistics of even companies printing out of Nashville or in Knoxville to bring us stuff to us directly,” he said.

The men’s team will play FAU Thursday, March 23 and the women will play Virginia Tech Saturday, March 25.