The Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots won’t be the only ones working during the Super Bowl this weekend. Sunday also marks one of the busiest times of the year for pizza restaurants, which are expected to supply millions of pizza slices to hungry football fans across the country. 

The Wall Street Journal projects approximately 4.4 million whole pizzas will be ordered on Super Bowl Sunday from Pizza Hut, Domino’s and Papa John’s alone.

The enormous influx in sales during the day and night have caused local pizza places to stock up and begin preparing days in advance for the projected Sunday frenzy.

“The Super Bowl is just crazy. It really is,” Pemberton Square Lil Caesars manager David Childers said. “It’s very extreme. People love pizza during the Super Bowl, especially because we have $5 fresh, ‘hot-n-ready’ pizzas. They go to town on it.”

Childers didn’t have specific numbers on how many extra pizzas his restaurant is projected to sell Sunday, but said he and his staff will be well equipped to handle the surge.

“We make extra pizzas and make sure we are completely fully staffed,” he said. “We go with the flow. We just make sure we are fully prepared. We always sell all of our product.”

At Pizza Inn, owner Rashmi Thakur and her husband Michel are prepared to see a 45 percent increase in delivery sales alone. The restaurant, which makes most of its profit from dine-in customers, expects a three-hour surge in deliveries once the game begins.

“Sunday afternoon, you have orders after orders after orders,” Rashmi said. “They may not dine in here, but it’s a lot of orders and a lot of deliveries. All night, you’re just busy.”

Fridays are usually the busiest time for most pizza restaurants, and Pizza Inn is no different. But while Michel said his place makes around 40 to 50 carryout pizzas a week — half of which are usually on Friday — the Super Bowl will supersize that number.

“It’s almost double that,” he said of what the restaurant expects Sunday. “We’ll serve almost 100 carryout pizzas.”

And while he said it’s tough to estimate the total increase in customers, Michel expects a roughly 60 percent increase in total sales for Super Bowl Sunday. Like most other pizza restaurants, he’ll enjoy the day American football fans love most, albeit for different reasons.

“Football and pizza really go together pretty well,” he said. “It’s going to be a tough day, but very rewarding and good for business.”