Again?

Businesses close, especially in small towns. It’s not usually that big a deal. Unless it’s your business or your employer. But all closures affect the community at large.

This post originally appeared on the Hermit Haus Redevelopment website on 2020-01-14.

In the past month or so, two chain restaurants in Cameron closed their doors: Bush’s Chicken and the Sonic (again). When businesses close, the fault usually rests with the management, not an elected official no matter how much he promotes himself as a problem solver, as has been suggested on Rantbook. The management issues at both of these restaurants were obvious. My opinion: both closed because management failed to manage their personnel.

Both Bush’s and the Sonic have a reputation for good, fast food. Bush’s is my favorite chicken house by far, and I have a loving relationship with Sonic that goes back to the 1970s. My first job was at a Sonic, and my first entrepreneurial ambition was to own a Sonic. If I went out for chicken or burgers, it was to a Bush’s (since I discovered them a decade ago) or to Sonic (since I was 14). So, I was saddened to find both of these restaurants in Cameron were the worst, in my experience, of their respective chains. I mean, how many of you Cameronians ate at either one regularly?

Bush’s built a new building. If they don’t reopen in the same location, that’s a lot of money to just walk away from.

The last four times I went to Bush’s, they were out of chicken. That happens occasionally with chicken places—but four times in a row? The staff was always friendly, new, and basically clueless. They seemed more interested in gossiping in the kitchen than taking care of business. The food was edible, but not up to Bush’s standards. The management failure here was in instilling a culture of customer service.

When I went to the Sonic, the service had improved dramatically since it closed and reopened. I had hope at first, but the quality of the kitchen remained well below Sonic standards even as the speed of delivery improved. Over the last year, I seldom got cold, stale food, but neither did I get food of the quality the Mayfield Dairy Queen down the street provides with a smile. Although service there was still slow and seemed to be reluctant—as if I were bothering them by wanting to eat something.

The Sonic looks even more desolate than the last time it closed.

It’s no wonder the parking lot was often (and now permanently) empty. Sonic has even removed the signage, which did not happen the last time this location closed. Again, the management failure was in personnel.

I don’t think the Sonic is coming back this time. They even took all the signs.

In fact, the Department of Labor published a study showing more than 80% of jobs created by tax-incentivised businesses went to people who moved to the area to take the jobs, not to the people who were already there. The new businesses increased the tax base of their new communities, and those communities grew as a result of the economic infusions. But the people who already lived in those communities failed to reap the benefits and were sometimes pushed out to even fringier areas.

The solution of to this problem is neither within my area of control nor Judge Young’s. But it is within the collective control of the community. Rather than ranting about the closings, we should be asking what we can do to promote the success of the businesses we rely on. Little things—like buying a shirt from the Bling Box instead of Land’s End or buying chicken feed from Cameron Farm and Ranch instead of Tractor Supply or Chew.com—help build our community and keep jobs in Cameron. Rather than griping about a stagnant economy, let’s ask how our small decisions contribute to stagnation or growth. What can we do to make our jobs better? How can we do more to help local businesses, especially the ones we work for.

In the mean time, it’s time to ask a question I’ve asked before. What would you do to repurpose a closed Sonic?

What Do You See?

What do you think of when you see something like this? If your first thought is, “I wonder how I can use this location to make money,” you may be an entrepreneur.

This post originally appeared on the Hermit Haus Redevelopment website on 2017-04-25.

What do you see when you spot an abandoned building or a closed business?

The trick of being a successful entrepreneur, especially a commercial real estate investor, is to see opportunity where others see failure.

This fact was brought home to me by the recent closing of the Sonic Drive-In in the small town where I spend most of my time these days. This being a Small Town, the closure was a big deal and sent the small town grapevine into overtime. All kinds of reasons for the failure were floated until another business closed for failure to pay sales taxes to the state. (We know this because the state is auctioning off all their assets.)

But the one thing that nobody talked about in either case was: "What’s going to happen to the building?" Okay. Nobody talked about the loss of a handful of sub-minimum-wage jobs, either, and they certainly should have. Finding new jobs in a rural small town is no easy matter.

Spork intentionally reuses old Sonic locations to its special purpose niche. Photo source: Dallas News

In kind of a combination of those two thoughts, my initial reaction on seeing the sign at the Sonic (I learned about the other closure much later) was, "I wonder what kind of business could go in that location." You see, a drive-in is a very special-purpose building. There aren’t a lot of other options for using it. In fact, there are so few options and it is so costly to build that Sonic has a program to repurpose other commercial buildings as drive-ins.

So there aren’t many alternative uses for a defunct Sonic, but there are a few. I’m going to list some, and I invite you to add anything else you can think of to the comments. I’d like to figure out how to bring at least a few jobs back to the local economy.

• Another drive-in or eatery
  Okay. That’s kind of a no-brainer. I’ve seen several old Sonic locations recycled like this. There’s even a Dallas chain, Spork, that targets old Sonic locations to put in "high-end" drive-ins.
  But the question here, is why did the Sonic fail? Sonic, after all, has extremely well-honed systems and a national advertising budget. If a Sonic with these advantages fails in a given location, what are the chances of a one-off restaurant succeeding there? Restaurants have a higher initial failure rate that just about any other business. One reason may be that they are so easy and cheap to start. Like many mom-and-pop businesses, restaurants tend to be under-capitalized, making it difficult to survive until they can become profitable a few years down the road.
• A used car dealership or other business office
  As with any investment, having more than one exit strategy is key to success.
  I’ve seen this happen in South Texas. The used car inventory was parked under the awning, and the kitchen became the sales office. But that business eventually failed, and the location is now an insurance office with plenty of covered parking. The used car idea is also being tried again in Missouri.
• A flea market or art fair
  Wouldn’t this idea just be perfect, assuming you could get the location cheap enough to be profitable? Each stall could be a vendor’s booth. Customers could drive through the location and only stop if something caught their eye. Of course, parking might become a bit problematic if you had enough traffic.

There are reasons why I wouldn’t try any of these ideas myself in this location. Mostly because we already have more of each of these types of business than I believe the community can support. But I’m sure there is something that can be done. I just don’t know what it is yet. Maybe we can figure it out together.

I’m Back

I’m so glad to have this guy hang around for a little while longer.

I’ve been absent from the blogosphere for a while—neither writing nor doing much in the way of reading. I’m sorry. It’s been a couple of months where life just got in the way. So I thought it appropriate to resume this endeavor with Grateful Monday.

I have so much to be grateful for, and so much has happened since 22 May. I hope to back-post some of what has happened, not that I think anyone is all that interested. I just have a thing for completeness.

So here’s what I am grateful for:

• Dad is alive and well. He is going to keep farming for at least another year and has decided to buy a new tractor. All of that has been in question at one time or another since May.
• Suna’s position at the company with which she has been contracting seems secure. They may even bring her on as a real employee.
• My contract at the Fruit Company will end about a month earlier because I have accepted an offer to work there (albeit in another department) as a real employee. I’m looking forward to getting back into tech support training and working with some old friends.
• TrackGrease seems to have gotten married. I don’t think I was officially invited, but I am happy for him. And I’m proud of him. I don’t think I tell him that enough. I know I don’t call enough.
• TubaBoy has been getting ready to start his undergraduate education at Southwestern.
• Beccano is getting ready for his junior year of high school. He continues to play guitar really well. Getting better all the time.

That’s the short version.

Pop?

I didn’t have my camera with me, but the sign looked like this one—except that it had a blue background. At least this one’s in Austin, too.

Photo source: rutlo

This morning on the way to church, I saw a new billboard. It featured the new Pepsi logo as the “O” in the word “POP.”

Why am I commenting on this sign? Well, this is Texas. I’ll come back to this later.

The purpose of advertising is to arouse a desire to purchase the product. This sign attempts to arouse desire by equating the Pepsi brand with the product through being included in a community through the common use of pop.

The problem is that using the word pop in Texas defines you as an outsider. Pop is a sound, not something you drink—unless you’re from someplace else. Native Texans say “soda,” “sodawater,” or (despite litigation) the generic use of the trademark of Pepsi’s chief competitor. (Notice the careful circumlocution!)

So this sign is a classic example of a major corporation and its advertising agency not bothering to understand its target audience.

The tinfoil hatters might say this is part of a greater conspiracy to further homogenize our culture. But I agree with the wise words a friend once told me. “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.” Unfortunately, I don’t know who first offered that advice.

Let’s hope our corporate leaders get a clue before all of our jobs move elsewhere.