The Mother Plucker’s Ramblings

If there are two words in the English vernacular that we never want Pluckers to be associated with it is the “Chain Restaurant”.  It never ceases to amaze me to see Americans dining at chain restaurants that look, feel, smell and taste the same in Austin, Texas as they do in Boise, Idaho.  Now I might understand this if the food quality or service at a Chili’s, Applebee’s or Olive Garden was superior to your local eateries.  It is quite possible that back in the mid to late 1980’s, these chain restaurants actually were better than most local places because that was a time that outside of large cities, Americans hadn’t been exposed to other cuisines like Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, etc.  However, these days you have so many choices of where to eat, why would anyone settle for a meal they know is going to be marginal?

For Pluckers, much has changed over the last 15 years as we have grown from a little take-out and delivery restaurant on West Campus in Austin and are now opening our 10th store.  However, we do everything and anything we can do to make each store we open look and feel a little different than the ones we opened previously.  We love the fact that people argue about which Pluckers is their favorite.  Although we may be growing, we promise you that we will never evolve into a typical chain.  What does that mean?  Here is a list of our promises to you loyal Pluckers fan of what we won’t become:

1.  We promise never to lower our prices - We don’t care if there is a recession going on out there.  We refuse to put together a $20 appetizer, entree and dessert for 2 combo to lure you in to Pluckers.  However, we do promise that we will never sacrifice on the quality of our wings, burgers and sauces and to do that means we may need to charge a little more than everyone else.  We do not believe that our guests want us to sacrifice quality in order to save them a couple of bucks.

 2.  We promise never to develop a Pluckers “Prototype” - For those of you outside the restaurant or real estate business, a “prototype” is what the chain restaurants develop so they can build the exact same building in any city in America.  This helps them cut their construction costs because they can repeat the same building over and over.  Boring!  Part of the fun for us is designing new patios, figuring out new ways and places to put our plasma tv’s and creating more interesting dining rooms and bars.  We didn’t get into this business to do the same thing over and over like a factory.

3.  We promise never to develop a restaurant jingle - “I want my baby back, baby back, baby back……”  Ok, so that one is definitely catchy, but we don’t think we need to create a song based on a limited time offer special on ribs to make you want to return to Pluckers.  We think that you can taste the difference in our food and see the genuine caring that the people we hire have for you.

4.  We promise to never allow the masses to determine what Pluckers is - Chain restaurants spend millions of dollars on market research, taste tests and advertising budgets to figure out how they should “brand” themselves in the future.  At Pluckers, the only market research we do is talking to our Pluckers Club members and other guests and make sure we are giving them what they want.  As far as taste tests are concerned, our formula for success is pretty simple…one of us creates a sauce or menu item and if the three of us don’t agree it is great, it doesn’t go on the menu.  We don’t need to sample it to thousands of people to know if something tastes good.  We have highly honed tastebuds developed from years of eating Cajun and Southern cuisine growing up.  And as far as advertising is concerned, sure we have some hits and misses, but we don’t use advertising agencies to tell us how to speak to you.  We use our own judgment and tell you the truth about Pluckers.  And by the way, no ad agency in the world would have suggested “If you don’t like our wings, we’ll give you the BIRD!”

5.  We promise to evolve with the times - Ever noticed how popular chain restaurants hang on too long to their outdated brand?  Walk into a Hooters and take a look at the outfits the girls are wearing.  Are you kidding me?  Those terrible fishnet stockings and orange shorts may have be fashionable in the 1980’s, but so were rugby shirts.  We always want Pluckers to be flexible enough so that our brand never gets stale to our guests.  Sure we like nostalgia too, but we would prefer that it isn’t in what our servers are wearing.