So who came up with the name Pluckers, a Warner Brother Character and other musings.

There are many versions of this story, but the one that I remember goes something like this.  Mark and I were working on a name for our new restaurant concept sometime before the Silver Spurs Chili Cookoff during our senior year at the University of Texas.  During the previous year’s Chili Cookoff, we had served thousands of pounds of wings and realized that we had a solid idea on our hands.  This year we wanted everyone in the Greek system at UT to know the name of our soon to be open restaurant.  The only problem was that we couldn’t think of a good name or a good slogan.  We asked our friends, parents, teachers, classmates, etc. for their suggestions.  I remember that I was pushing hard for Bubba’s Wings to be the name of our new venture.  You see, I am from Georgia and I love a good bubba (definition: a good ole boy, usually from the southern United States who at the time loved anything to do with Billy Ray Cyrus, NASCAR, girls with big hair and would scream for “Freebird” at concerts even if Lynyrd Skynyrd wasn’t playing).  I had grown up with Bubba’s most of my life and it just sounded like a good name to me.  How can you not like a guy named Bubba?

I guess the answer to that question came from my mother who informed me that being a Bubba usually meant that you were a racist redneck as well.  I figured that this was a slight oversight on my part, but I am not one for political correctness so I kept pushing for it.  I can’t remember many other good names we had for our new restaurant until a girl I was dating came up with “Cluckers”.  Hmmm….that made sense, we were a chicken restaurant, chickens liked to cluck and it sounded kind of catchy.  The next step was to run the name Cluckers against all other trademarked names in the world.  Unfortunately, it came back that there is a chicken chain out of New York called “Cluck U” and our attorneys said that it was going to be “deceptively similar” to Cluck U (that’s lawyer speak for “don’t even think about using that name because you will get sued”). By the way, Cluck U is still around and although I have never tried it, I hear they make some pretty good wings. 

Unfortunately, we didn’t have any other solid alternative names for the restaurant.  Mark and I, being less than brilliant UT advertising majors decided that there was only one thing that could be done to name our restaurant…we needed to drink!  We surmised that in our drunken stupor, the name of our restaurant would magically come to us.  Have you ever noticed that you can remember answers to trivia questions or people’s names you haven’t thought of in years when you are inebriated?   So we put together our creative genius over either some Bud Ice or Icehouse, which one it was I can’t remember, but I do remember that the rage of “Ice” beers caused killer hangovers.  If you don’t believe me, ask any kid who went to college in the early 90’s.

I think after a while of getting nowhere, one of us suggested just changing “Cluckers” to “Pluckers”.  Aha….the light came on in our heads (or maybe it was the buzz from 6% alcohol beer) and we both agreed that was the answer.  If you knew Mark and I in college, you would know that we usually took the easy way out when it came to things like this.  We ran it by our attorneys and they told us that no one else had that trademark, so there it was….we had our name.

Now that we had a name, we needed a fun slogan and logo for our new wing joint.  I was telling my dad about our new name and he suggested that we use his graphic designer to create our logo.  Since we didn’t know any graphic designers and because at the time I thought my dad knew what the hell he was talking about, we paid some douchebag about $500 to come up with three different ideas for our logo.  Essentially what this graphic designer (and I use that term very loosely) came up with was Foghorn Leghorn from the Bugs Bunny cartoon and superimposed him in a circle, a diamond and a square.  Those were our three logo choices…Foghorn in a circle, a diamond and a square.  I guess you get what you pay for.

So we called up my dad and asked him how we were going to be able to use Foghorn Leghorn in our logo since our attorneys warned us about getting sued for using the name “Cluckers”.  He explained to me that as long as there was a 10% difference between our logo and Porky Pig’s buddy that we would be all right.  We must have spent a week studying our logo against Foghorn trying to determine if it was 10% different.  Eventually, we concluded that it could be argued that the beak and neck of our logo  were 10% different than Foghorn.  We also assumed that if Warner Brothers wanted to sue us, they weren’t going to win any money, so we threw caution to the wind.  We put ole Foghorn in a diamond in case you never saw our original logo.

So we had our name, Foghorn as our logo and it was time for us to come up with a slogan.  I remember that I was pushing for “Chicken is Chicken, but the Wing is the Thing”.  Mark thought that was only average, but neither of us could think of anything better.  So we went to our mothers for help.  In case you haven’t ever met either of our mothers, you need to know three things about them.  First, they are Jewish mothers.  Second, they think that their creative genius is a very close second to the likes of Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Richard Pryor.  And finally, even if they have little to no knowledge at all on a particular subject, they think they are always right.

However, this time I think going to my mom for help actually paid off.  For twelve years my mom contradicts this story, but I swear it to be the truth.  I was on the phone with her throwing around slogan ideas and told her we wanted people to remember our restaurant in the future.  There was a restaurant in Destin, Florida called Fudpuckers that had a great slogan “You ain’t been Pucked, til’ you been Fudpucked”.  I wanted something like that, catchy and irreverent.  So we started playing on words that rhymed with Pluckers (you can come up with a few of them yourself) and finally I think she said “If you don’t like our chicken, we’ll shoot you a bird!”   I liked that and after a few minutes I tried morphing it into “If you don’t like our wings, we’ll give you the bird!”  Now she claims that she came up with the slogan we have been using for years, but that is not the way I remember it.  Then again, my mom drank a lot less Bud Ice in college so its possible she is correct.  I could be wrong, but if you reference the above three rules related to our mothers, you will see that I have a legitimate argument.

I ran the idea by Mark and some friends and everyone loved it.  The first unveiling of the new name, slogan and logo officially went out at Chili Cookoff our senior year.  I can’t even remember who designed the shirts, but to this day, they are the best shirts we have ever made.  I think there are only about 3 of those shirts left in the world, so if you have one, keep it as it may be worth something one day.  It was simple….Foghorn Leghorn shooting a bird and saying “If you don’t like our wings, we’ll give you the Bird!”  I think we printed about 100 of these shirts and handed them out to every hot girl we knew on campus and some of our friends as well.  Within minutes of the Chili Cookoff starting, the delicious smell of our wings and the harem of beautiful UT coeds had our booth hopping.  Everyone wanted to know when the restaurant was opening.  The only thing was, first we had to graduate…

To be continued….

Since I’m a girl, guys are often skeptical of my sports knowledge. So, over the years I’ve gotten pretty good at betting with unsuspecting suckers who doubt my legitimacy as a self-proclaimed sports nut. And while it’s always fun to win twenty bucks, my bar tab, or simple bragging rights, I’ve decided to step it up a notch.

Here’s the deal. Every Friday at 8:35 AM, I will be on 101X with Jason and Deb. Jason and I will go head to head and pick three NFL games against the spread. If I win, I get the privilege of gloating to Jason, one of my closest friends, on the air on Monday mornings. If I lose, all Austin-area Pluckers will do $1 Bud Lights during the Monday Night Football game. Let me repeat that. If I lose, all Austin-area Pluckers will do $1 Bud Lights during the Monday Night Football game.

As of blog time, we are four weeks into the season and Jason and I have each won two weeks (although, technically I’m winning 7 games to 4 games with 1 push). But there is still 11 Monday night games left and 11 chances for Pluckers guests to enjoy $1 Bud Lights during Monday Night Football. I realize this means you have to root against me. And I’m okay with that. Because even though I’m historically a pretty sore loser, at least I’ll have $1 Bud Lights to cushion the blow.

We are asked all the time what is the real story behind Pluckers. Why did you want to be in the restaurant business? How did you think of the idea? Where did you get the recipes? So here is the first blog in a series of how Pluckers became Pluckers. Most of the facts will be true…from my perspective at least…which if you ask many of the people who know me is a skewed perspective. 

At First There Were Four

You’ve probably read the back of our menu where provides a shortened version of how Mark and I started Pluckers in our college dorm room. However, very few people know that there were actually four of us that were planning to start Pluckers.  These were our friends Marc and Andrew. Marc went on to an illustrious career as advertising creative and now works in the liquor and wine business.  Andrew has settled into corporate law in Chicago.

What really happened was that one night during our freshman year in 1991, we had all been drinking at our dorm called Castilian after a night on 6th street in Austin and wanted to find a place to deliver us chicken wings. Marc and I had worked at various wings restaurants in Atlanta during high school and assumed there must be plenty of wings restaurants in Austin. We were shocked when we couldn’t find a single restaurant that delivered wings or even served chicken wings on the menu. Growing up in the ATL, there were hundreds of wing restaurants and it seemed unfathomable that a college town like Austin had none. We started to talk about how much fun it would be to open our own restaurant. Mark and Andrew walked in the room and we all started throwing ideas around about how to make it happen.

We looked across the street and there was a 5 foot wide by 8 foot deep shack in the Castilian parking lot. We thought that would be the “perfect” place to open a little delivery and take-out restaurant. Little did we know that this shack (which still stands there today) had no air conditioning, little electricity and would get as hot as130 degrees in the summer. But being freshmen, we thought we knew everything about everything and started to devise a plan to work part-time at the restaurant and continue to go to school. Obviously we had no idea how hard it was to get in the restaurant business, had no management, marketing or accounting skills, but we didn’t care, we wanted some wings dammit!

Marc’s dad owned several restaurants in Atlanta so when we went home for the summer, we decided to sell him on our idea and see what he thought. I think the first thing he told us is that if we were smart, we would never get into the restaurant business. However, he was nice enough to humor us and using insight from Marc’s dad, we came up with the budget to build a wings restaurant while enjoying a Patty Melt Plate at the Waffle House in Atlanta. For the uninitiated, a Patty Melt Plate is a hamburger, between two pieces of heavily buttered toast, ketchup and chopped onions all griddled up and served with hashbrowns and may be one of my favorite things in the world to eat.  If you haven’t tried it, it may be second only to Pluckers wings when you are drunk or stoned…but I digress. Our budget was literally written on a Waffle House napkin and were probably about as accurate as could be expected for two guys with a freshman level education.

We were so excited about the prospect of opening this wings restaurant that Marc  and I flew up to Chicago, budget in hand and went to visit Andrew and sell his parents on our grandiose idea. Now Andrew’s parents, being typical Jewish parents thought the idea was horrible. Andrew’s dad wanted him to follow in his footsteps as an ambulance chaser (which he did for about 3 years out of law school) and didn’t want his son missing any of his valuable UT education. However, somehow we convinced them that we would each only have to work about 10 hours a week and that we could fit it in our schedules. Little did we know that wasn’t even remotely a possibility. When we came back to school that fall, we discussed everything with Mark Greenberg and during our sophomore year, we spent time together working on marketing ideas, figuring out how to raise capital, recipes, etc.

I can’t remember exactly when or what happened, but at some point, Marc and Andrew realized that this wasn’t their dream and sort of fell by the wayside. This was about the time that Mark Greenberg and I were both turned down by the business school at UT.  It seems that since we were students from out of state, we had to have GPA’s over 3.95 or above to transfer into the business school that year. Because we had been pledges during our freshman year and spent most of it locked in our fraternity basement, building a party, sleeping or drinking, we were just a shade away from meeting that requirement.  By a shade, i mean that I think we had a 2.5 GPA during  our freshman year. So what were Mark and I going to do?  Eureka! We will  be advertising students. Sure we knew nothing about advertising and didn’t even want to be in advertising, but it seemed easy and we didn’t have anything else we were interested in. The reality is that if either of us had gotten into the business school at UT, there probably wouldn’t be a Pluckers today. So we have UT to thank for that!

As advertising students, the one thing that Mark and I learned over our final three years of college is that we both agreed that most advertising was crap.  We wanted to devise advertising campaigns that spoke to people on a real-world level and weren’t full of fancy catch words or Shakespearean wit. Our teachers routinely gave us C’s in our classes and it pretty much embittered us to the ad game. It’s funny, but we both still harbor a little of that resentment to this day.  That’s partially why we voice a lot of our own radio commercials and have never used an ad agency.

At some point during our junior year, we decided that we were going to go for it and start a restaurant. Neither of us wanted to sit behind a desk or even have a boss for that matter, so the restaurant thing was looking pretty good. So where to start? The first idea we had was to come up with a bunch of wing sauces and try them out on our friends. The annual Silver Spurs Chili Cook-off seemed as good a place as any. There would be plenty of drunk and hungry people at the event and since everyone else was serving chili, we figured that we might have something fun and different to offer. So we went to our fraternity house and cooked up several thousand pounds of wings and brought them out to the Chili Cook-off.  I think the first sauces we had were mild, medium, hot, teriyaki, BBQ and Honey BBQ.  For those of you that were out there that day I apologize. You see, we didn’t realize that cooking wings in the morning and serving them 8 hours later would give you a case of the runs.

The reaction we received at the Chili Cook-off was outstanding and encouraged us to keep moving forward with the idea. I think the Chili Cookoff  was officially the day that we knew we had something special and weren’t going to let anything get in our way of opening a wings place.  At this point we started looking around the campus area for a location, but learned quickly that no landlords wanted to rent space to two college juniors with no restaurant experience. It was going to take a bank loan, more money than we had and a landlord that believed in our concept before we were going to find a space. Luckily, we found one at the corner of 23rd and Rio Grande.

The Original Pluckers was a converted from Armen’s Mediterranean restaurant. Armen’s was a hokey little place that served good food and was a favorite haunt of the UT faculty. Back in those days, UT students weren’t eating sushi, Indian food or anything called cous cous or hummus.  We all lived on Pizza Classics, Gumby’s and Mad Dog and Beans. After 11 years of being in business near campus, Armen wanted to move his operations to a place 5 times the size up on Parmer and Mopac. Side note: Armen failed in that location in about 6 months.

We bought Armen’s restaurant all of the equipment in it for $11,000 and assumed his lease. The next step was finding a bank that would believe in us so we could secure a loan. Mark and I had each saved about $25,000 and our parents gave us another $25,000, but we still needed $25,000 from a bank to be able to finance the business. We spent weeks vistiing different banks all over Austin trying to find someone that would give us a shot. After about the first 10 banks, we were really discouraged because it seemed that no one wanted to lend money to two college kids with a business plan and no restaurant management experience. Luckily, we found a man named Gary Ashby at Liberty Bank. Gary saw how hard we were willing to work and believed in us enough to finance the $25,000 loan.

Because we were operating on a shoestring budget, Mark and I basically had to renovate the restaurant ourselves.  We knocked down all of the old walls in Armen’s and built new ones, painted the restaurant, waxed the floors and pretty much rigged the place together enough to pass health, fire and building codes. We had a lot of help at that time from Mark’s future wife Niffer and Mark’s brother and our future partner, Sean.  Sean was still in college and would round up a bunch of his buddies and they would come down to the restaurant to paint and build. It’s funny to think that his involvement and hard work would eventually pay off down the road.

One of my favorite stories before we opened is how we decided what items were going to put on the menu. We already what we felt were solid recipes for chicken wings, but we needed to add other items for some diversity. So we called all of the potential food distribution companies in the area and asked them to bring us all of their fried appetizers and side items. Fortunately or unfortunately they brought us about 100 different items. As college students, we were in heaven….or so we thought. We set up a little Fry Daddy one summer evening at Mark’s house and started frying up batches of every fried food known to man, 20 kinds of fries, 12 jalapeno poppers, fried zucchini, chicken tenders, taquitos and on and on. Instead of being smart and eating  a small bite of everything, Mark and I would eat  an entire portion of each item. Within 2 hours, I swear we had put down about 3 pounds of fried food each and had only gotten about 20% of the way through the items. I have never felt so sick!

A couple of days later, we set up the Fry Daddy again and this time were a little smarter about it…we only ate half of everything we cooked. At the end, we got through about half the items and then just gave up. So if you are wondering how we decided our initial menu, it was as much a product of us not being able to eat another bite of fried food as it was a process of elimination. I think the final decision on us choosing to serve our soon to be signature Waffle Fries was mailny because we didn’t want to try any more french fries. 

To be continued…..

Pop Quiz: Are you a recluse? Are you Amish? Do you live under a rock? If the answer to all of these questions is no, then you are most certainly aware that last week was Shark Week.

This year, I was especially excited for shark week. Every year since birth, my family goes on vacation to the beach and this year there were two (yes TWO) shark incidents while we were there! Apparently, the sharks in North Carolina’s Outer Banks were gearing up for Shark Week as well.  And while sharks aren’t necessarily fun when you’re trying to enjoy a nice, relaxing family vacation, it did get me thinking that a lot of regular television shows could actually be improved by Shark Week.

So, without further ado, here is my list of five television shows that could be better with a little Shark Week shake up. 

1. The Bachelor/Bachelorette – This is a no-brainer. The parallels here are too easy. I’d be willing to bet most of the Bachelors would actually prefer jumping into a shark tank than deal with one more sobbing girl with the crazy eyes.
2. Jersey Shore – Enjoy your season in Italy, Snooki. Next season will be filmed in a shark tank. Come on. I can’t be the only one who would enjoy watching the self-proclaimed guidos and guidettes fist-pumping while a couple of tiger sharks circle the cage.
3. Hoarders – Let me first say this: If you’re not watching Hoarders, you should be. Each episode, I am shocked at the trash that these people insist on keeping. No matter how hard the psychologists and organization specialists try, the hoarders rarely admit that they have a problem. Now try to imagine this: the hoarder is in a shark tank and they have a choice – trash the blanket covered in cat urine or the psychologist tosses a handful of chum in the tank. I have a hunch it wouldn’t take much convincing to get their house in order.
4. America’s Next Top Model – I have not now, nor will I ever watch an episode of a show where Tyra Banks is considered an expert opinion. However, I could easily be swayed if it meant that I got to watch the aspiring models – who, from what I understand, are prone to tripping – strut down a runway that had sharks swimming on either side of it.
5. The Apprentice – Let’s be honest. “You’re fired” has been pretty played out. Wouldn’t it be a much fresher approach if the “losing team” was suspended over school of angry sharks? Instead of the cliché “You’re fired”, the Donald could simply push a button to release the trap door of the eliminated contestant.

The is just a start. The more I thought about it, the more shows popped into my mind! And although, these “changes” will most definitely never become a reality, a girl can dream can’t she?

My name is Kristin and I have a problem. I think someone is trying to take my job. Actually, I think more than one person is trying to take my job. Please allow me to explain.

As the Marketing Director, my job is to get you to try Pluckers. And once you’ve tried Pluckers, my goal is not only get you to come back but to come back more often. I’ve been working here for close to seven years and I think of myself as sort of an evangelist for Pluckers. But lately, I think someone is trying to take my job. Maybe it’s paranoia or insecurity so I’ll let you be the judge.

Example #1

A few weeks ago I was at a party with some friends and we met a couple that had just moved to Austin. We were making the obligatory small talk and the new Austinites asked me where I worked. Hooray! Now is the time for me to shine. Here are two people that have never heard of Pluckers and I can use all of my knowledge and experience to convince them to come in for dinner. But before I could get a word out, one of my “friends” starts telling them the best things to order on the menu and the number of TVs at his favorite location. Before I even said a word, they were scheduling a group outing to the next Trivia night!

Example #2

We’re opening a second location in Baton Rouge this fall. I was perusing tigerdroppings.com for research purposes and I came across a message board that had an entire discussion dedicated to Pluckers. It looked like this:  

User 1: Finally signed up for the Pluckers club!!!!! I got a free appetizer, a free meal to the new bluebonnet location when it opens, a chance to win a gift card, plus other cool perks. Can’t beat that deal at all!!!

User 2: Man I need to get on that! I love Pluckers. Where do you sign up?

Now, it’s one thing when it’s a friend (who I suspect was trying to impress me with his knowledge of all things Pluckers), but who is this person? This is my job!

Example #3

This morning, I was doing a little social network stalking (via Facebook) and decided to check out the Pluckers page (www.facebook.com/motherpluckers) to see if anyone had posted any new pictures recently. And what did I find? A post linking me to a blog entry dedicated to Pluckers! Here is an excerpt:

“It wasn’t long before we started bragging to visiting friends and family about our new hangout. When my brother-in-law plans a trip to see us, we always reserve one of the nights for a Pluckers’ feast. Short of a year living up North, we moved down to South Austin and quickly mapped our new location at South Lamar.”

Now, one time I can ignore. Two times could just be a coincidence. But three times??? My bosses (Pluckers’ owners) keep telling me that this is one of the great things about Pluckers. Our guests are so loyal that they can’t wait to tell people what they love about Pluckers. But I can’t shake the feeling that someone is trying to steal my job. I just can’t figure out how many…

Email addresses are frequently the most entertaining part of the applications.  For example, we’ve recently received applications with the following emails:

Babymama2@mail.com  – Is she the second baby mama?
katiewantshavefun@mail.com – We bet she does.
queenpoo@mail.com  – We don’t even want to know.

On our application, we ask certain questions about the applicant’s previous employment.  Here are a few of our favorites responses:

“I was fired for being late too many times”
“I liked everything except bussing my own tables”
“I try really hard at most things”   (MOST? Not all?)
“I’ve never had a job and you can take my job virginity”

We even had an applicant who meant to send his resume, but instead sent an extremely sexually graphic short story he was writing.  Needless to say, he did not get an interview.  But every now and then, a few “gems” pass through the preliminary application process and know exactly how to screw up their phone screening.

When we tried to schedule one applicant for an in-store interview his response was “I sleep until noon and can’t make an interview until after that time”.

We recently left a phone message for an applicant and instead of listening to the voicemail with the number to call us back simply immediately texted back  “Who Dis?”

But perhaps the most entertaining of all, are the interviews themselves.  Several interviewees have thought it appropriate to grab an alcoholic beverage at the bar and drank it during the interview.  I mean pluckers is laid back, but we aren’t that laid back!  However, our favorite  happened at our Round Rock location a few years ago.  After completing the interview, the applicant walked outside and was immediately surrounded by police and arrested on theft charges.

So, the next time you’re at work and wondering how that annoying coworker ever got hired, keep in mind – it could be much worse!

The new Pluckers in Grapevine is now open for business and the people in Grapevine seem to love what we have to offer.  People ask me all the time how we decide where to open restaurants or what goes into opening a new restaurant.  One of my favorite comment cards we received this week was from a guest that wrote, “I forgot how nice it was to be in a restaurant where the staff actually smiles.  Your managers stopped by our tables and actually seemed to care about how we were doing.  This is the best service we have had in a long time!”  That comment is exactly why we got into the restaurant business in the first place.  It’s even more amazing when someone has an experience like that at a restaurant that just opened.

Most people have absolutely no idea what goes into opening a restaurant.  To be honest, when we opened the first Pluckers at age 22, neither did we.  For more on that, click here.  These days, we spend a lot of time determining where the next Pluckers locations should be.  We are competitive people and we want each store we open to be more successful and more fun for our guests than the previous Pluckers that opened.  We believe we have set the bar pretty high for ourselves so that isn’t an easy thing.  However, as we grow, we want to be sure that Pluckers never becomes a stale chain and that each store has its own personality that represents the neighborhood it is located in.

The first step is determining which markets we want to be located in.  After we know that we would like to see Pluckers in a particular market, we have to find a great location within that market.  Because we are very selective about our restaurant sites, this can take up to 5 years to find the right location in a market.  We have found that being patient has led to having great locations.

Once we have selected a location, the next major step involves drawing architectural plans.  We have a great time sitting down with our architect and our construction crew visualizing what the next Pluckers will look like.  You would probably laugh if you saw the arguments that we have deciding how many plasma televisions  each restaurant will have and where they should be located.  Because we are so passionate about sports, we want to make sure that everyone has a great seat to watch multiple games at a time.  We also have fun thinking about the outdoor areas, the Coop, and the bar.  Because we aren’t a cookie cutter restaurant, we try and start from scratch with each location.

After the plans have been drawn, there is a waiting process after you send your plans to the city departments.  If you have never opened a business, you would be amazed by how many different offices within a city there are.  There are people that review your plans for health reasons, ADA, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, etc.  Let’s just say that you are dealing with about 20 people with 20 different agendas…it isn’t fun.

Once the plans have been approved we start construction.  About two years ago we created our own construction company to handle the building process.  This has made things much easier because we can easily make changes as we are finishing out each restaurant.  The construction process lasts about 4-5 months.  By the way, if you happen to know anyone who is looking for a great General Contractor, feel free to contact us at 6thstreetconstruction.com

The last three months before we open we start hiring our new staff.  Training 100+ people to open a restaurant isn’t easy.  When we opened our first restaurant, I remember training the entire staff before we opened in 30 minutes.  Needless to say, the service and food quality weren’t the greatest.  For the Grapevine store we spent over  4 weeks training the new staff.

At this point in time, we bring in anywhere between 15-20 employee trainers from other Pluckers around the state for each new store opening.  These people are the best of the best and their job is to spread the Pluckers culture to our employees and our guests.   It is incredible to watch them at work.  Not only do they put in 15 hour days training the staff, but they remain patient throughout the entire process.  This is incredibly hard to do when you are tired and working with new staff members who do not excel at their jobs yet.  If you happen to be in Grapevine and see someone in a Trainer shirt, please thank them because they are why your experience that evening has been so much fun.

The week before the restaurant officially opens to the public we operate mock shifts.  During these mock shifts we send out invitations to people who live in the local area.  These include Little Leagues, local businesses and other people that Pluckers will depend on to help spread the word about how great we are.  In addition, we invite all of our Pluckers Club members to come in for free food.  All in all, we serve over 4,000 guests before the restaurant even opens to give our staff some practice.

Finally, its opening day.  No matter how many successful Pluckers we open, there are still a bit of nerves for us when the doors open.  You always have that doubt that maybe they won’t like us.  Even though we had ten successful restaurants before the Grapevine store opened, there are still those jitters we get waiting for the first guests to walk through the door.   However, once the first guests walk in, that’s when the fun begins.  It is incredibly rewarding to see the smiles on people’s faces when they get to experience Pluckers for the first time.  We take a lot of pride in making our new guests as comfortable as possible.  Whether a guest wants to sample a sauce, try a fried pickle or have a television turned on the game they want to watch, we make it our goal to win you over the course of the first hour you spend with us.  We feel like you should be treated like family in our home and we believe that family will do whatever it takes to make you happy.

Hopefully this gave you some insight into what goes into opening a Pluckers.  It isn’t easy, but we hope that you like the results of our hard work.  We hope to see you soon!

Fantasy Football…Don’t Be That Guy

Football season is a magical time at the Pluckers headquarters. At any given moment, two or more of us can be heard in a heated discussion defending our position on a player, team, division, game, or quite frankly anything even remotely related to football. Between us, we are involved in 15 fantasy leagues. Add that to the number of guests who host their fantasy football drafts at Pluckers and we’ve become self-proclaimed fantasy football experts.

With all these fantasy drafts under our belts, we’ve noticed a few trends that are not only ridiculous but rather irritating to your fellow drafters.  We thought we’d take a moment to impart our wisdom on to you to help you avoid being ‘that guy’.

The ‘Professional Drafter’ Guy

This is the guy that instead of just naming his player has to say it something like “And with the 2^nd pick in the 2010 [insert clever fantasy league name here] draft, the so and so’s select…” We get it. You’ve watched the NFL draft before.  That bit was clever back in 1991 when people first started playing fantasy football.  Now you are just the tool that we talk about on the side how we can kick you out the league next year.   Hint: Maybe you should spend more time thinking about who you draft and less time on how you draft them. The only thing worse than this guy? The second guy that does it.

The “I’ll take Sidney Rice” Guy

As of blog time, I’ve been to three fantasy drafts and it’s happened in ALL THREE DRAFTS. It’s not that hard.  Don’t rely on a fantasy football magazine that was printed in June.   If this is news to you, you better be a rookie fantasy drafter.  Let me give you another tip: don’t believe it when your buddies tell you Chris Johnson is out for the season. Unless you heard it from me…

The ‘He’s Already Been Drafted’ Guy

You know who you are. You see Cedric Benson still sitting there in the 6^th round and you think, ‘He’s still available in the 6^th round? Idiots!’ Yet when you try to draft him, everyone yells at you because guess what? He’s already been drafted! Listen. If it looks too good to be true – it is!

The ‘Homer’ Guy

I’m a Longhorns fan as much as the next guy, but I’m not taking Jordan Shipley with my 3^rd round pick. I get it. I’m a Ravens fan. Nothing makes me happier than the fact that we finally have an offensive player in the top 5 fantasy player rankings. But I’m also not naïve enough to think Todd Heap is a good tight end pick when Dallas Clark is still available. So, yeah, when you take Vince Young as your starting QB when Drew Brees is still out there? I’m judging you.

The ‘First to Draft a Kicker’ Guy

Do you know the point difference between Nate Kaeding and Jeff Reed? Less than one. So, wasting a pick on the “best” kicker available is simply comical. In my draft last weekend, we made the first person to draft a kicker buy a round of shots for everyone. We thought it was a good compromise for wasting our time with a stupid pick. I highly recommend adopting it.

Listen…we’re not looking into a crystal ball. We don’t claim to have a magic formula to help you win your fantasy league. You can take our advice or leave it. One way or the other, you’ll give us something to discuss in the office after our fantasy drafts. Regardless, we wish you a great fantasy football season and we’ll see you on Sundays!

Much to my business partners chagrin, here I am writing a blog about soccer.  I am not sure what inspired me to write this exactly.  Maybe its that I feel there are a lot of sports fans out there that are missing out on a great sport.  Or maybe I enjoyed seeing Pluckers packed for a lot of the World Cup games.  Or maybe I believe that Landon Donovan’s goal against Algeria will finally help soccer catch on in America.  For those of you reading this that think that Americans don’t care about soccer, check out the security camera at our Baton Rouge store after Donovan scores his goal here.  Or if you want to see another video that brings tears to my eyes every time I see it check out The World Reacts.

I was like you in the past…a soccer hater.  I thought the sport was boring, too European, too many guys rolling around on the ground with fake injuries, etc.  But something has changed me in the past 5 years.  Honestly, I grew up a huge baseball fan, but since the strike in 1995, I have never fallen back in love with baseball.  The NBA?  The players have grown to become such “me-first” people that I find it difficult to want to cheer on any team.  Hell, was it me or was Lebron’s “Decision” the worst 60 minutes of television in the past year?  What genius thought that it was necessary to devote 60 minutes for something that took 3 seconds?  Hockey?  I love the NHL Playoffs, but I won’t even try and sell you on both hockey and soccer in one blog post.

What that left me was a gaping hole between March Madness and the start of the football season.  So I decided to give soccer a shot at first just from April to May.  Over time, I have really learned to appreciate the sport and without boring you, will give you 3 reasons why you should give soccer a chance also if you are a sports fan.

1.  Relegation.

This is the single greatest concept in sports today.  For those unfamiliar with the concept of relegation, each country has their own football association and the best 20 teams make up their top division.  In England its called the Premier League, it Italy its Serie A, in Spain its La Liga, etc.  Beneath the top division, there is a 2nd division, 3rd division and so on.  Basically, if a team finishes in the bottom 3 of the 20 teams at the end of the year, they get relegated to the 2nd division and the top 3 teams of the 2nd division get promoted to the top division.Think about if we applied that to any American sport.  There would be no expansion, no teams tanking at the end of the season to get a higher draft pick and every game would mean something, especially if your team was having a bad year and could get relegated.  It also means no more having to deal with owners of teams like the Kansas City Royals, LA Clippers, Pittsburgh Pirates and Detroit Lions who consistently put a terrible product on the field, yet charge their fans big bucks to watch them.  Finally, it means that any community, anywhere could start at the bottom and make their way to the top…basically the American Dream.  The concept of relegation is American capitalism in its finest sports form, only we choose not to use it for our sports which is a shame.

2.  Soccer is everything our sports aren’t.

Personally, I am fine watching 4 hours college football games because there are only 12 of them a year for each team.  However, who wants to watch a four hour baseball game when there are 162 of them?  Soccer is great because you have two 45-minute halves, a short halftime and then its over.  You don’t have to commit an entire day to it on your weekend or more importantly if a game falls on a weekday when you have work.For those of you over 30, you may remember a time when watching sports was just sports.  These days if you are at the stadium we are overwhelmed by jumbotrons, luxury boxes and a theme song for every batter or every trip up the court in the NBA.  Back in the day, you pretty much just had sports at a sporting event.  What a novel concept…attending an NBA game with the purpose of actually watching basketball!  We didn’t need a scoreboard to tell us when to cheer or a cheesy voice telling us to yell “Dee-Fense” every 30 seconds.  We watched the game and knew when to react.

Watch a soccer game and there is nothing but the game.  Even on TV, there are no commercials, no breaks and no sponsors except in the upper corner of your screen.  Sure there is music but that is the chanting of the fans singing throughout the game usually either in support of their heroes or making fun of their opposition.  It is being a sports fan in its purist form in 2010.

3.  Intra-Country Tournaments

Besides the regular season, there are also a series of tournaments that are held by each country’s football association.  Some of tournaments are between the best of each country like the Champions League or UEFA Cup and others are just within the country.  In England, they have the FA Cup which takes over 700 teams from all levels of football in England and puts them in one tournament.  Its like March Madness, except on an even greater level for potential upsets.  Instead of seeding the top teams to help assure they make it to the final rounds, there is no seeding whatsoever and matchups are chosen at random draw.  Even cooler is that the team that gets to play at home is also picked at random.  To compare this to an American sport, imagine if the New York Yankees had to play an away game against some semi-pro team from New Braunfels (or some other small community).  It’s like that terrible hockey movie Mystery, Alaska except that it actually happens every year.

I could go on and on about other reasons why you should watch soccer, but I am hoping that those three reasons are unique enough to make you want to give it a chance.   Ultimately, you are going to have to get over the fact that there are usually only 6-10 good scoring chances in many games and you have to learn the names of all those foreign players that you can’t pronounce.  However, if you are a sports fan like me, give it a chance for one season (I suggest watching the Premier League on ESPN and Fox Soccer Channel) and see if you enjoy it.  Heck, most of the games are on between 7am and 11am on Saturday and Sunday mornings so you won’t even have to miss any American football.