Famous Dave's: boning up on the competition

Nation's Restaurant News, May 12, 1997 by Amy Zuber

But on a weekend evening, when the shacks are at their busiest, customers may have to wait 10 minutes in line before placing their orders and another 10 minutes to get their food.

"We are working diligently to decrease those wait times," Lanham says. "We are increasing efficiencies in the kitchen and the to-go area so that we can increase table turns and add additional tables to the prototype." Lanham says the company is testing a new kitchen design to alleviate some of the problems.

"They don't have all the kinks worked out," Hickok says. "With their very limited operating history, I don't know if all the kinks have been discovered. But those are things that are common to most young companies."

Anderson, who is a member of the Choctaw and Chippewa Indian tribes, developed an obsession for ribs while he was growing up on Chicago's West Side. He constantly was sampling the leftover barbecue his father, an electrician, would bring home from work. His fascination with barbecue has taken him on a nationwide tour through the smokehouses of some of the greatest bastions of barbecue, from Tennessee and Georgia to Missouri and Texas.

But before he opened a barbecue restaurant, Anderson's first business was a wholesale florist operation in Chicago that went bankrupt in the late 1970s. He then changed careers to work as a route salesman for American Can Co. in Minnesota. His Indian heritage and success as a sales representative attracted the attention of a band of Midwestern Chippewas with a bingo hall in Hayward, Minn. In the late 1980s Anderson began developing gaming operations for the group and eventually teamed up with lawyer Stan Taube and financier Lyle Berman to develop Grand Casinos.

While there, Anderson fine-tuned and served his barbecue sauce to diners before opening his first ribs joint in Hayward in 1994, an operation that immediately began serving more than 500 customers during the week and an additional 1,000 on the weekends. The success of the restaurant propelled him to found Famous Dave's and open additional barbecue restaurants in the Twin Cities.

Among the eight to 10 shacks expected to open this year, Famous Dave's is scheduled to make its first venture outside the Twin Cities in Madison, Wis. Next year the company plans to open 20 additional restaurants throughout the Midwest -- focusing on Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. For nationwide expansion outside the Midwest, the company is considering the option of area development partners, Payne says.

Growth of the blues clubs, which will be limited to major metropolitan areas with lots of musical talent, is scheduled to begin next year in Chicago. Payne says that despite the numbers of blues clubs in Chicago, the city will appreciate a concept that has a lower check average than that of newcomer House of Blues and a more central location than those of many of the local competitors.

"We will hit Chicago with a blues club to establish our brand," Payne says. "Then we will hit the city with shacks."