This is an outstanding idea.
I went to a bar like this in Brooklyn. It was decorated like the outside of a trailer park, complete with little trailers that were dining booths. There were strings of lights for ambient lighting and the tables had camping lamps.
The rest of the furniture was lawn chairs and folding tables, and they served hot dogs and hamburgers and potato salad, standard picnic fare.
Honestly, that sounds like some refreshing fun. Have the cook with a big grill out front, and putting in the order is just chatting with them.
“Hey, bud, you want a burger, hot dog, steak, or some of this brisket I been smoking since this morning? Want something to drink? There’s beer and soda in the cooler, or we got tap water. The little cooler has juice for the little’uns.”
And then have a cashier keep track of what they had, conveyor-belt sushi style. The cook chats with whoever is standing around drinking a beer with them (and is drinking beers or soda or whatever all shift), and everything gets served on paper plates. And the tables are all those wooden picnic tables with cheap plastic tablecloths.
And those who are eating there are encouraged to stand around and chat with other people as well (if they want). Just make the whole thing like a backyard barbecue with your neighbor Hank.
And hire nothing but retired men and women working part time as the cooks. Nothing but grill daddies and mommies, working just for some extra cash and the fun of barbecuing. I would take that job when I retired in an instant.
Edit: better yet, make it habachi-style, where there’s a grill daddy/mommy for every group or two, set up like a park barbecue. I love this and want to go to one or work at one now.
I want to open it overseas! Export some actual American culture.
I also want to have special football nights where we put the game on and do snack food appetizers. Pigs in a blanket, a couple crackpots of little smokies, chips and dip. There’s a big sign out front that says when we offer tea we mean southern style sweet tea, so please ask for unsweetened if that’s what you want!
So many ways this could be done right.
I would take that job when I retired in an instant
You won’t have to get a job when you retire if you have this kind of good ideas
For some context, I am in the military and will be retiring in five years at the age of 47. So I won’t need to work, but I want to find fun work that I want to do after. I think I’m the type that will wither and die within a year of retiring from any work. I’m not self-motivated enough to create work for myself, and I need to be doing something or I’ll sleep 18 hours a day and feel useless the rest of the time. I need a schedule, and I need someone else to make it.
Or better yet, please ship authentic texmex anywhere outside of the us thanks. I am dying.
You can get good Texmex pretty much anywhere with with a hispanic population. Won’t be as cheap as the South but still. There’s a couple spots near me in the PNW that set up sketchy pop-ups on the sidewalk after dark but they got dope tacos al pastor and they are always busy.
