Pluckers

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!