Business & Tech

Daily's Sports Grill Celebrates 20 Years Today

Back when Jim Barnett was winning football championships as coach at Trabuco Hills High, he wanted something other than the typical pizza joint for his fans to hang out.

What resulted was Daily's Sports Grill, which opened on Memorial Day weekend in 1993 when Rancho Santa Margarita was a satellite community that was still six years from cityhood.

Today at 9:30 a.m., about the same time the Indianapolis 500 roars to life on ABC, Daily's will drop the flag on its 20th year in the community.

"We're just trying to make a party of it," said Carrie Vlahos, who is the managing partner for the business that has always faced Aventura on the backside of the Empresa Center.

Vlahos is one of five partners in one of the city's oldest businesses, along with George Bob Seney, Jimmy Dunn, Mike Rae and Barnett. The latter three were the original partners.

At 4 p.m., the band Slingshot begins playing, and by the time Game 6 of the NHL playoffs between the Kings and Sharks begins about an hour later, Daily's figures to be deep into an inexpensive barbecue of hamburgers and hotdogs, an all-day Happy Hour with drink specials that include $2 domestic pints and $4 domestic schooners, and hourly raffles from many businesses within the center.

For almost 7,300 days, Daily's has served as Rancho Santa Margarita's original sports bar.

Barnett had coached Long Beach Poly to a football championship in 1980, and had become the first coach at Trabuco Hills High in 1986. For nine seasons he coached the Mustangs. He won three Southern Section championships, including back-to-back in 1988-89.

He wanted to create a sports hangout that was something more than a pizza joint, and modeled his business venture after JoJo's and The Annex in Long Beach, Vlahos said. The fall of 1993, his first season after opening Daily's, he won his last championship at Trabuco Hills, which was fed by the growing population of the unincorporated area. His last season as coach was 1994, but his legacy within the community continues with one of the city's longest-running businesses.

Vlahos has known Barnett since she was 17 and a teacher's aid in his health class at Trabuco Hills. She went away to college, began working as a server at the restaurant/bar 10 years ago, and became a partner 2 1/2 years ago.

"He didn't want it to be just another pizza parlor," Vlahos said. "He wanted to have good food at a decent price where you could hang out. We hardly ever raise our prices."

It has undergone two expansions and one remodel—last summer—and it's hard to imagine it won't operate another couple of decades.

But for now, it's time to look back on the past couple of decades.

"Our whole goal Sunday is to give back to the people who have supported us all these years," Vlahos said. "We're expecting a very big day."


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here