Ask Wednesday: Jennifer Trieskey on opening and running Dickie-Do’s BBQ

Bigger than religion for some folks

Edited by Morris Dean

Dickie-Do’s BBQ is the quintessential, small-town mom and pop restaurant. It’s “Cheers” set in a small Southern town, but without the beer. Jennifer & Matthew Trieskey opened for business in April 2013, in Haw River, North Carolina. Their restaurant resides in a nondescript brick building at the intersection of the Hwy 70 By-Pass and NC Rt 49, and if you blink, you might miss it.

    Having been aware of Dickie-Do’s BBQ even before it opened for business, we were early fans as the admirable Trieskeys contemplated opening a restaurant. They had already proved they had a popular product by the rave reviews they received from neighbors and residents of surrounding communities, where they had catered a number of outdoor and street-side events over the preceding three years.
    But starting a restaurant is no easy undertaking. We wondered how they were doing. Thanks to Jen Trieskey for agreeing to be interviewed. [Our questions appear in italics.]

How did the idea of going into the restaurant business come about? How did the one of you who DIDN’T think it first react when you heard it? Was it easy or difficult for you both (I mean you and Matthew) to get on board and in sync about it?
    Matt first discovered smoking meat as a hobby, as most people do. He and a very competitive buddy would smoke various meats for poker nights with the boys and see whose came out on top. Matt really got into it. He just began to share his food with more and more people and do more and more research about BBQ and smoking meats. Before you knew it people were asking him to cook for them. Earning 5th Place in our first ever competition at Hillsborough Hog Day in 2009 is really what solidified the whole idea of a restaurant/catering business for both of us. We’ve kind of been in it together, side by side all along.

Did either of your families of origin have a restaurant or other business? What role if any did that play?
    Matt has always loved to cook and is the chef in the Trieskey family. His parents owned a restaurant and pizza place when he was growing up. My grandparents were always into baking and cooking and my grandfather owned a donut shop when I was little. We both come from families where food played a big role in our upbringing.

Why did you name your business “Dickie-Do’s”? Is there some family or other background there?
    It’s really a play on words and started out as a joke when we passed a “Dickey’s BBQ” one day about six years ago. At that point in time, having a restaurant was just something we talked about as a pipe dream. I saw the sign for Dickey’s and called it “Dickie-Do’s” and said “Hey! That would be a great name for a restaurant if you ever open one! Your slogan could be “We’ll feed you so much, your stomach will stick out more than your (fill in the blank).” Needless to say, the name stuck, but the slogan didn’t. We went with something a little more family friendly.

As things have transpired, have you been happy with the name, or occasionally wished it were something else?
    Several people have come into the restaurant who get the play on the name. I think we’re happy with the name overall. I can’t imagine anything different at this point, although a lot of people do want to know who “Dickie” is. I just point to Matt.

From a wider perspective of restaurants in general, or at least in our immediate geographic area, how good an idea was it to launch a restaurant business?
    Restaurants are considered a huge risk in general. Not to mention how incredibly particular folks are about their BBQ in this area. We had just had so many requests and good feedback from doing local festivals and catering local events that there came a point where we almost didn’t have a choice but to open a restaurant. You technically can’t cater without a commercial kitchen and we were getting so many orders and running things out of our house, we needed to do it to keep “Dickie-Do’s” going. It was and still is, a huge risk. The general public does not realize the time, money, and effort that goes on behind the scenes to make a restaurant work and all the requirements and regulations you need to satisfy to open your doors and stay in business. It’s a lot!

Ribs hot off the smoker; Dickie-Do’s
smokes pork spare ribs for the meat
to be succulent and fall off the bone,
but with a slight “bark” on the outside

What about your best day so far made it the best?
    When you think of our best day in terms of finances, it actually was recently when almost all of Alamance County lost power due to the ice storm. We still had power and were so busy we could almost not keep up! But honestly our best days are the ones when we have time to interact with the families and customers that come in. When I hear kids laughing at the tables in my dining room and playing checkers or tic-tac-toe at one of the tables we made. When we can donate food to a family in need or help someone out when they might not have enough for a sandwich. Those are the days that make it all worth it.

What about your worst day so far made it the best?
    That would definitely be the day we came in to find the fire in the smoke box had gone out sometime during the night and the wireless system that is supposed to notify Matt of the smoker temperature somehow failed. We had a catering job for 20lbs of BBQ that day and the meat was not cooked! That was stressful!

Where on a line between best and worst is your typical day?
    Most days are stressful to some degree. I can’t recall a day when everything has been perfect. But that’s life, I guess. Matt and I are both at the restaurant every day – usually upwards of 12 hours a day. Matt is in charge of the meat and smoker-type areas, and I generally help organize the business, catering jobs, keeping everyone in line, and keeping things running as smoothly as possible. We have a great crew so far. We generally get pretty busy for lunch and then wind down by 2 p.m. Most nights we do a good dinner crowd, but Fridays and Saturdays definitely prevail.

We believe your whole family is involved in the business, isn’t that right? What is the extent of their involvement? What do they do?
    Our three kids (Katelyn 19, Conner 15, Collin 14) have helped from day one. They had always helped with festivals and catering jobs since before we even opened the doors to the restaurant. The boys were there scraping tiles and building walls.

How has it worked out for them?
    I don’t think Dickie-Do’s is ever their favorite place to go, but you can tell that they’ve become more invested in the business. They’ve definitely developed lots of life skills. I’m sure they’ll thank us for this someday. Conner mainly works the counter and cash-register and is outstanding with customer service. Collin likes being behind the scenes and working on the grill. Katelyn helps out when she can, but she is 19 and has a life of her own. I don’t think she’ll realize some of the benefits of the restaurant until later down the road.

We know you have another job (or two?), and it hasn’t been easy for you. What would you like to say about that?
    It’s actually been quite a challenge to balance my job as an after-hours phone Triage Nurse at UNC and manage the restaurant. I’m often very sleep-deprived. We’ve been trying not to cross the streams as far as home funds and restaurant funds but at this stage of the game, it’s hard not to. So a lot of times, I’m working extra hours at my “real” job to make up for a bad week at the restaurant.

We haven’t ever known what other job Matthew might have. Does he hold down another job as well, or is his role in Dickie-Do’s BBQ totally time-consuming?
    Up until this past November he was in IT Support at LabCorp. The restaurant just became too demanding and something had to give, so it was ultimately Matt’s job, as the hours with mine are more flexible. But we started Dickie-Do’s with both of us working regular jobs. He is the one who has always gotten up in the middle of the night to tend the smoker and goes in early in the morning to get the chicken and ribs on. He’s quite the trooper.

Dickie-Do’s famous Ranch Potatoes –
by far their most popular side

We know that you submitted an application for a competition of start-up businesses through which some small number of the total applicants would be awarded a good sum to help them get their feet on the ground. Please describe what that was about.
    It was a contest for Small Business Grants through a contest called “Mission Small Business” sponsored by Chase & Living Social. There were a series of questions you had to answer and then write a summary about what made your business special. You also needed to round up 250 online votes from supporters who liked your business.

We personally thought just from knowing you and your family, that you had to have had a good chance to win an award. So we were surprised and disappointed when you didn’t.
    I was actually pretty surprised when we didn’t win either. I looked at the list of winners and it seemed like they were targeting more invention-centered businesses.

What did you learn by participating? Was it a net loss or a net win to participate?
    If anything, the process helped us get a feel for the amount of support we had regarding opening a restaurant. and it helped keep the passion going and keep us focused on our goals during the daunting process of remodeling the building we rented.

How difficult was it to write the application? You had to submit a business plan, didn’t you? And, of course, anyone going into business needs a good plan anyway. How did you acquire the knowledge necessary to prepare a coherent plan?
    I actually met with several resources along the way. I really tried to pull from as many sources as I could as far as learning how to start a small business. I met with representatives from S.C.O.R.E (Service Core of Retired Executives) to the Head of the Business School at Alamance Community College as well as advisers at our Credit Union. I really wanted to know if we were going to be able to pull this off, both financially and logistically. We had to get really creative in many areas. We were really hoping for someone to back us with some capital investment but that never happened so we worked with what we had.

Could you give an example or two of how you had to get creative?
    Getting creative came in anywhere from finding even the smallest loopholes in regulations, networking with anybody and everybody who worked with the inspections department, in the restaurant business and in construction. Our restaurant is a conglomeration of mostly used equipment that was either bought at auction or salvaged from old restaurants that were being torn down. The trick is knowing what will pass inspection and what will not. Our hood vent system came all the way from an old Hooters in Asheville and we brought it back half hanging off the end of the truck in the pouring rain....That was quite the adventure! We also spent a lot of time traveling to foreclosed restaurants to get old equipment to salvage, fix it up and, even re-purpose some items. We made our own tables and I did all the painting and decorating. Matt has taught himself to weld and has designed and built all of our smokers over the years. There are definitely layers of creativity in our building!

Looking back, was there anything you failed to plan for? Could you have planned for it if you had known more or had better advice?
    I don’t think anyone could have helped me plan for all of the permits, regulations, codes, and inspections that are involved. It can drive a person mad trying to please all of the government departments that are out there! And you need a permit for everything! We get inspected by the Health Department every three months. That alone is enough to drive me mad! I’m a perfectionist when it comes to cleanliness so I expect my staff to keep the restaurant up to or above standards at all times.

We believe that you are a devoutly religious person. Do you pray for help or guidance for the business? Have you received divine intervention?
    We pray every day before opening. This process has taught both Matt and me to really trust in God to see us through all kinds of situations. From day one, issues that may have been stumbling blocks for some people trying to open a restaurant were not necessarily an issue for us. God opened doors and kept us on track. One of the main goals we had when we started Dickie-Do’s was to have it be a ministry to the local community. We pray every day that we will be able to bless the people that come into our restaurant and those that live in our community. We are able to provide jobs to some people who are going through a difficult time in their lives and are really in need of a steady income. When we hear the positive comments from our employees, from our customers, and from the community, we know that even though it may be tough at times, God has big plans for Dickie-Do’s!
    The winter months were a little slow/rough for us and we don’t quite have a year under our belt yet (this month will mark our first anniversary) so we are still encountering a lot of the challenges of starting and owning a business. But we are still getting lots of wonderful feedback!

Have you lost any sleep over the fact that your main product comes from the slaughter of intelligent animals? An article we googled on ABC News ranks pigs as among “The 10 Smartest Animals.” It says that pigs “are perhaps the smartest, cleanest domestic animals known…A sign of their cleverness came from experiments in [which] pigs were trained to move a cursor on a video screen with their snouts and used the cursor to distinguish between scribbles they knew and those they were seeing for the first time. They learned the task as quickly as chimpanzees.”
    First, I would challenge you to ask a born-and-bred, old-time Haw River native if he loses sleep over eating our BBQ. BBQ is a huge tradition in the South…it’s bigger than religion for some folks. I’ve been lectured for upwards of 45 minutes by some old-timers about how to cook “real” BBQ.
    And second, if the pigs were really that smart, they would know I need to cook them to pay my mortgage and they’d offer themselves up willingly.

Where do you see Dickie-Do’s BBQ going from here? Or 10 years from now?
    A lot of folks have already told us that we need a bigger place, a bigger parking lot, a better location, etc. But to be honest, every time we discuss the future plans for Dickie-Do’s it always cycles back around to our little home base here in Haw River. I think we will always call Haw River “home” even if we do end up with a few more locations around the area. I had one customer tell me that someday I would be as big as some BBQ celebrity named "Bill Ellis" down in Wilson, North Carolina. He's got a fleet of big rigs and caters all over the nation. Truth be told, that's not really our goal for Dickie-Do’s and I don’t think we’d ever want to see it get that big. We’d loose the camaraderie with our employees, the quaint feeling of a small town restaurant, the casual, caring conversations with our regular customers....I just can’t picture Dickie-Do’s BBQ without all that!
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Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

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