Alexia Biafore hopes the Mountaineers improve their record to 21-6 when they take on Texas Tech this afternoon at the West Virginia University Coliseum.

 

But regardless of the game outcome, it will be a memorable one for the 2009 Bridgeport High School graduate. That’s because it’s Shoney’s Game Day. As a representative of Shoney’s, one of the university’s basketball and football sponsors, she’ll receive the game ball and some pretty sweet treatment.

 

“We get access to the suite that day and get commercials all throughout the game,” she said.

 

Biafore and her fiancé Michael Burge – also a BHS graduate - watch WVU basketball, so taking in the action up-close-and-personal is pretty exciting, she said. It’s also bittersweet. It is her mother, BHS alumna Denise Gillespie Biafore, who typically has the honor but having battled cancer for several months, she is presently under hospital care.

 

“Mom has a passion for WVU sports, so I know it’s important to her,” Biafore said. “And since I will be taking over, I want to continue in her legacy.”

 

Biafore grew up learning the ropes of the business as her mom served as manager of Shoney’s and Boomerang restaurants. She graduated from West Virginia University’s business management program in 2013, thereafter working in Pittsburgh as an executive team leader for Target. She then moved back to Bridgeport to take a management position with A.C. Moore, but more importantly, spend time with her mom as she battled cancer. In late- 2016, she made a decision to follow in her mom’s footsteps in managing the family-owned Shoney’s stores.

 

“I began in September when she started getting sick. I knew I needed to learn it while she was able to still teach me,” Biafore said. “We own two of them – in Flatwoods and Summersville, but we do a lot of (human relations) work for another 10 stores.”

 

Biafore said her mom has been her lifelong inspiration and is responsible for her own interest in the retail and restaurant industries.

 

“I owe it all to her,” she said.

 

But Denise Gillespie Biafore isn’t just well-versed on restaurant management.

 

“She’s quite a fighter,” Biafore said.

 

Read a previous Connect-Bridgeport story about Biafore HERE.