Pickles

This post was inspired by my friend Em Inkles and her new Facebook group: Pickled Blog Project. This is an amazing group of caring, supportive bloggers and if you are looking for a tribe, I highly recommend it! #PickledBlogs

Background

I grew up in the restaurant business. At 12 I was hostessing and bussing tables. By 14 I was waitressing and around 17 I think, I was a manager. Ironically, I wanted nothing to do with the restaurant business when I started college. In fact, my major was fashion merchandising.

But in my mid-twenties, one restaurant idea kept playing over and over in my head. My mom and middle sister liked the idea so much, we began to explore properties to make it happen.

The Inspiration

Hooters. Yes, I shit you not. Hooters was the inspiration for this project. I’ve never been to Hooters. I just know supposedly large breasted women (push-up bras) serve wings there. I fuckin’ hate wings. Wings are the worst! They are these itty-bitty chicken legs that produce approximately 2 bites of chicken. Meanwhile, you are forced to look at the chicken’s bones and veins. No thank you. Like my fish sticks, I prefer my chicken so overly processed that when my body is exhumed in 2099, to verify my royal lineage, the only thing left in the coffin will be fish sticks and “chicken”.

The Idea

Our restaurant would be called Pickles. Pickles would be a casual restaurant, targeted to women. The servers would be good-looking men, shirt off and tight shorts. Sure, at the time I didn’t know if that was legal but that’s what you get when a 20-something is creating the business plan. I of course, would do all of the interviewing of the staff. My sister protested but I am the oldest sister, therefore, I win.

Although we would serve grilled chicken salads (no wings!) and other female favorites, we would have an assortment of pickle selections. Fried pickles, those overly large pickles you see at the deli that are in glass jars, sweet pickles (my favorite) and dill pickles. New uses of pickles would be invented.

Like Hooters with their owl on top of their signs, we would have a gigantic pickle on ours. I never decided if it had a friendly face on it or not.

This would be a place where women could meet after work for a glass of wine and ogle over our staff. If women didn’t want to bar hop during bachelorette parties, they could come to Pickles to celebrate their upcoming marriage. Like birthdays at restaurants where the entire staff sings to the guest, we would have a big to-do over the woman getting married. In my mind, a mini/quick version of Magic Mike to celebrate the upcoming nuptials.

So that is an overview of a once thought of business I had. What are businesses you thought of that would be a success? Did someone take off with it?