Michelle Samenfeld, City Editor

For Nitty Gritty owner Marsh Shapiro, the decision to celebrate birthdays at his restaurant in 1985 came down to simple arithmetic; if there are 40,000 students on campus and 365 days in a year, then an average of about 110 students have birthdays every day.

“Let’s try to get 10 percent to come here to celebrate their birthdays,” Shapiro said about his initial decision to make the Nitty Gritty a birthday restaurant.

More than 299,900 birthdays later, Shapiro said the Gritty is preparing to celebrate its 300,000th birthday in the next two weeks and is giving the winner a $1,000 cash birthday present.

Shapiro, along with his wife Susan, launched the idea in the beginning of the 1985 school year, hoping to draw 10-12 students, his primary clientele, each day celebrating their birthdays for a free mug and unlimited beer. Since the drinking age at that time was 18, nearly all University of Wisconsin students could celebrate with a brew.

Within the first 60 days of operation, Shapiro said 20 to 25 students were going to the Gritty every day and soon the number of birthdays increased up to 35 and 40.

Shapiro said the closing manager records the number of birthdays daily in the restaurant’s diary and has done so since 1985, with 103 being the most birthdays recorded for one day.

“It’s unbelievable chemistry on a given night to have 20, 30, 40 birthdays,” Shapiro said.

In 1986, the drinking age was raised to 21 and Shapiro had to attract more than just students to the Gritty.

He began a new advertisement campaign with a TV spot showing a woman in her mid-40s reminiscing about her last birthday at the Nitty Gritty, saying, “Why should young people have all the fun?”

Because the Gritty was still classified as a restaurant, Shapiro said he wanted to emphasize to students who weren’t 21 that they could still come in for lunch or dinner on their birthday. As a result of the increased marketing, Shapiro said he had the opportunity to expand his menu and enlarge his kitchen.

Since then, Shapiro said the restaurant has had a number of significant birthday milestones, including twin, triplet and quadruplet birthdays, a woman who celebrated birthdays 97 through 106 at the Gritty along with several other three-digit birthdays, and scores of sports broadcasters, athletes and government figures.

The milestone customer who was the Nitty Gritty’s 100,000th birthday received a Caribbean cruise, and the. 200,000th birthday won a trip to Hawaii.

After buying the restaurant in 1968 and leaving his career in the television industry, Shapiro watched the Gritty evolve from a venue with live music seven days a week that was a gathering place for students who were part of the anti-Vietnam movement.

“The Sterling Hall bombing was planned at the Nitty Gritty,” Shapiro said.

He said anything that seemed to favor “the establishment,” like clothing shops, couldn’t survive on campus because of the widespread subculture sentiment among students.

“Coming into the subculture environment, I had long hair, a beard, my work shirt and jeans. Had I not done that, I couldn’t have survived at all,” Shapiro said.

Between 1975 and 1985, Shapiro said the restaurant was in “limbo” and not generating a big income, so a part-time employee gave him the idea to draw customers in by celebrating their birthdays.

Since 1985, the Gritty has renovated four times to accommodate its popularity, expanding from the 11 picnic tables Shapiro began with in 1968.

“It’s become as close to a campus tradition as any other place on campus,” Shapiro said.