Carey Bringle:
Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Jeff Lenard:
What made you say I’m going to open my second restaurant and I’m going to pick a place that used to be a gas station?

Carey Bringle:
I am real particular about my locations as far as where we go and what the building or environment looks like. For Peg Leg, I wanted to have a cinder block building with really no windows and concrete floor. And it had that vibe, that’s really a West Tennessee barbecue vibe. For Bringle’s Smoking Oasis, somebody showed me the piece of property. It had been converted from a gas station, they were using it as a body shop, it had a bunch of junked cars. But what was nice about it was it still had the center island, which was the little convenience store, and had the large canopy over the top. It was a triangular piece of property, so it was where two streets split. It was an attractive piece of property to me because I could see the vision of what we could do with that, and we went from there.

Jeff Lenard:
And I probably should back up before we dive right in. You’re really renowned for barbecue and. I have a friend in Nashville and when I mentioned that we were talking, he’s like they have great food. Give us the concept. What is your concept in terms of what you offer at both locations?

Carey Bringle:
Peg Leg Porker is a real Tennessee barbecue restaurant. We’re doing sort of the roots of Tennessee barbecue at Peg Leg Porker. Our specialty is our dry ribs, which was originated in west Tennessee by the Rendezvous and by the Vergos family, they were Greek. It’s a rib that smoked and then it gets a dry seasoning on it right before it hits your plate. We’re known for our pulled pork as well. All we do is pork and chicken at Peg Leg Porker. When I was growing up, nobody was doing beef barbecue in the state of Tennessee, we’d tell you to go to Texas and that was a steak. Certainly I don’t believe that now and when I found the property for Bringle’s Smoking Oasis—I’ve always said there would only be one Peg Leg Porker—

Carey Bringle:
so I didn’t want to do another Peg Leg Porker and I didn’t want to make Peg Leg sort of everything to everybody. We’ve made it very clear. We want to stay in our lane at Peg Leg, which is pork and chicken barbecue, and be as authentic to Tennessee and West Tennessee as possible with Bringle’s Smoking Oasis. It allowed me the freedom to explore Texas barbecue and kind of expand that with some other offerings and be a little more creative. I didn’t pigeonhole myself into any particular thing at the Oasis because I didn’t want to. And at Peg Leg I did want to. We’re doing brisket smoked pastrami, smoked turkey, we’re doing some beef ribs. And so we have a wider offering at the Oasis of what we’re serving and it’s cafeteria style. Peg Leg is a quick service, you walk in, you walk up to the counter, you order your food, and then it comes out within about four minutes. At Bringle’s Smoking Oasis, you’re coming through a cafeteria style line, everything is a la cart, at the end of that line is a meat cutter who is cutting all your meats to order by the pound, half pound, quarter pound, however much you want. That’s what we’ll cut for you.

Chris Blasinsky:
Carey, we talk to a lot of people on this podcast and I love the stories and how they come up with—especially with convenience stores—they have different variations on quicks and stops and all kinds of different spellings. So Peg Leg…I think it’s fair that we get the story about how you came up with the name.

Carey Bringle:
Peg Leg Porker has been my brand for a long time. I literally am the Peg Leg Porker. I have one leg, I’m an above the knee amputee on my right leg. I lost my leg to osteosarcoma at age 17. It was the summer before my senior year and so instead of taking that as a negative and making it something to be sad about, I took it and had fun with it. And then down the road established the Peg Leg Porker brand. Now we have the Peg Leg Porker restaurant, we’ve got food products, clothing, we have a spirits company—we really encompass that whole barbecue lifestyle and everything around it. And now we have a new addition to that with Bringle’s Smoking Oasis.

Jeff Lenard:
You mentioned the lifestyle—part of that is you have a line of bourbon.

Carey Bringle:
I do. We have Peg Leg Porker Spirits. We have Peg Leg Porker Tennessee straight bourbon, and that’s distributed in 10 states now plus the U.K. It’s been very successful. We’re an award-winning bourbon company. We’re a non-distilling producer but we have been starting to lay down our own supply over the past couple of years. Our aged product was distilled by somebody else and we took that and developed a process of filtering it through Hickory charcoal before it goes into the bottle after it’s de-barreled. That’s given it a distinctive flavor and taste, and it’s been very wildly accepted, which has been nice.

Jeff Lenard:
You mentioned the time, the speed of service. Besides looking online and seeing lines pretty extensive lines, I think as much as people brag about the food, they brag about ‘I went there and I didn’t have too long a line.’ The speed of service is really important for convenience stores, but it’s also increasingly becoming around convenience. I noticed that at the Smoking Oasis, you’ve used this triangular property that might not work for a lot of other establishments. You have cornhole, you have outdoor seating, and you’ve literally made an oasis around that. How did you come up with a design like that? Did somebody lay it out for you or did you see this property and you had your vision?

Carey Bringle:
We saw the property and I kind of had a vision about it. I have an architect that I work with on all my properties. He’s drawing a lot of what’s my vision and what we want to do with the property. We were lucky that we got some key variances on this property. It had an easement underneath it that could have been very problematic. I really took a chance when I closed on this property. I was able to get that easement abandoned that ran under the length of the property and then I was able to get a parking variance.

Carey Bringle:
There’s going to be some additional street parking that’s going to get put in due to a development, so we were able to go to the city and say, ‘we want to clean this up. We want to make it nice for the neighborhood. We want to make this a gathering spot for everybody, but in order to do that, I need a parking variance to where we don’t have to chop up the property with a bunch of parking spaces on it.’ And we were able to get that passed, which was huge and really shaped the development of that property and allowed us to develop the entire triangle and give us that much outdoor seating. We were either going to asphalt or concrete it. We decided to put concrete walkways and run Astroturf on it.

Carey Bringle:
It’s worked for us. I think it’s great environment for the kids and for the families and for pets. Everybody seems to really love it and because there’s a walled fenced in all around it, it has become an oasis for the neighborhood. There’s commercial development on one side of the street and on the other is a full neighborhood. People can walk with their kids and their animals and come and walk to our place and hang out all afternoon knowing that they’re in a safe environment.

Chris Blasinsky:
I like that. You’ve created a destination for your community. I think that resonates with our industry as well. You seem to be out there a lot. I see a lot of interviews with you, different podcast. When you’re on the road, I’m going to take an educated guess that you stop at gas stations and convenience stores. For the folks listening, what do you look for when you go in a convenience store or a gas station? What do you grab for?

Carey Bringle:
I lean towards a clean place that’s nice, that has a lot of amenities. And they’re becoming more and more upscale, which is nice to see. If I’m in a rural town, I might look for something that’s not new or not brand new and shiny. I may look for the local spot that might do their own sandwiches or something unique to the area. When I’m in a bigger city, I’m looking for a nice clean, environment with a lot of amenities so I can take care of everything while I’m there.

Jeff Lenard:
Our surveys indicate the same thing when we talk to customers. It’s nice clean bathrooms. If we care about the bathrooms, we certainly care about the food. And I think that’s what a lot of people try to push as far as messaging. Sixty percent of our industry is one store operators. How do you get to two stores and what do you have to do differently? Do you take time for your two favorites now? And are there any special tips that you would suggest as, as you expand that you’ve learned?

Carey Bringle:
It’s tough to manage more than just the one. I’ve got an excellent team, so what I’ve tried to do is relinquish some of the day-to-day control to that team and meet with my top-level managers and let them manage their teams. I’m in the office every day so I’m here at Peg Leg every day. I’m touching and seeing and I can tell them what I think may need to improve or what I see going on. But you have to have confidence in your people to be able to run that day-to-day because we have so many different businesses. I’ve got to concentrate on a lot of different areas other than just the restaurant, so I’ve got to be confident in that restaurant team to do their job and to manage those locations. I’ve got some great people that do that. I’ve just got to remind myself that I need to lead from the top and lead by example, and then they’ll know the right things to do as they move down the line.

Jeff Lenard:
So it’s not necessarily being at both locations physically, but being there supporting without necessarily being there because you have the team. I think logistics wise, it’s got to be tough if you have to be at both places.

Carey Bringle:
And you know, that is tough. I do try and go to both places. With the Oasis, it’s only open on the weekends. It’s easier for me to bounce over there from Peg Leg. But you can’t be everywhere at once, so you have to pick and choose what you think might be the critical times when you need to be available to go over there and keep your finger on the pulse. And you got to listen to not only your managers, but listen to your employees and listen to your customers. Every review that we get comes across my phone. I do that for a reason. Some people say don’t do that it will drive you nuts, but I do it because I can’t be there all the time.

Carey Bringle:
And I have to understand that although there’s a lot of silly criticism out there and invalid criticism, there is a lot of valid criticism. And if you take it all in and you listen to everybody’s perspective on what happened or what went wrong or what went right, then you get the full picture. And I like to see the big picture and understand that it’s not just one-sided in the customer’s favor or one-sided in your favor. There may be many factors that played into what happened with the customer experience and we need to understand those factors so that we can ensure a great customer experience every time somebody comes in.

Jeff Lenard:
Chris, that’s a brave man! I saw on Yelp, you had something like 4,000 reviews and highly positive. And then there’s somebody will say how come there’s not this? And was beef, I think it was. And it’s like, the name has porker in it. I’m pretty sure that kind of gives you a good idea of what’s there.

Chris Blasinsky:
I was flipping through your Twitter profile a little bit and now I’m hungry for sure. Everything looks fantastic. I’m not somebody who is going to light a fire in my backyard and throw slab a meat on it. I don’t have the environment for that. But I’m curious. I’ve listened to you say how to do barbecue really well, but for those novices like me out there, how can we really screw it up?

Carey Bringle:
Well, there’s plenty of ways to screw it up and believe me, I’ve probably done them all. I tell my staff you’re probably not a pitmaster if you’ve never had a grease fire. I’ve done it all and even burned down big rigs. Barbecue, a lot of times is about trial and error. I actually just published the book ‘Barbecue for Dummies’ and it’s a reference book that if I’d had that book when I started cooking barbecue, it would’ve probably shaved 10 years off my learning. So it’ll help you avoid all the mistakes that I made along the way, Barbecue is not rocket science.

Carey Bringle:
It is about time and temperature and patience. And that’s the biggest thing that people lack is the patience. But that’s also what makes barbecue great. The fact that barbecue is so community oriented and so friend oriented is because it takes so long that you have time to sit around and visit and talk to your family and your friends and understand what’s going on in their life. That’s what really draws me to barbecue and that’s why we have a very strong barbecue community and family. I’m friends with the other barbecue owners here in Nashville. We’re friends with barbecue owners all across the country that will call on and ask advice and say, ‘Hey, what are you doing here? How do you do that?’ Or ‘I’m fixing to try this, have you done this?’ That’s very strong and it’s very powerful when you’re trying to be successful in business to have that network of resources to lean on. I have found it to be great and I’ve tried to pass that on to other people who are starting out, who we can help along.

Chris Blasinsky:
This sounds very similar to of the convenience store industry. It’s a very sharing industry where they get together, they learn, share secrets but not all.

Carey Bringle:
There’s room for everybody in this market. You know, as long as you’re making good barbecue we welcome you into the community. Everybody does it a little bit different.

Jeff Lenard:
It reminds me of when we visited a really good barbecue place that was in a Valero gas station in Kansas City. We were filming there and we, we asked the person at the hotel how far it is, whether we can walk or drive or how long it would take. And she kind of whispered, you know it’s a gas station, don’t you? And it’s like, yes, that’s why we’re going.

Chris Blasinsky:
That’s why we want to go.

Jeff Lenard:
It’s even cooler that it’s at a gas station. Final question for you. In business, we talk a lot about, what’s the secret sauce that you have for success, and you literally have a secret sauce. I’m not going to ask you to divulge that, but business wise, what is the secret sauce that you’d like to share? That if you do these things, you’re probably going to succeed more than you’ll fail.

Carey Bringle:
I think you have to understand and know your product and your numbers an your audience. I studied for a year two years before I opened up Peg Leg Porker. I knew all my numbers, I had spreadsheets, I had forecasts, I knew all my recipes, I knew what my costs were. I had a firm grasp on a lot of the aspects of my business. A restaurant is like a convenience store. Just like anything else, it’s a business. If you don’t know how to run a business, or you don’t have that business acumen, you have no business owning a restaurant because it’s a very complicated business with a lot of moving parts.

Carey Bringle:
The other thing I would say is hard work and grit. If you have the determination and the will, then you’ll try to find a way around problems. I don’t like people to tell me I can’t. I want people to come and tell me what they can do. When somebody tells me they can’t, I say I don’t really think that you’re looking at it from all the different aspects or from all the different angles. There’s always a way to get something accomplished. I did that with the opening of Peg Leg Porker. I had very little money. The banks were saying no. I went out and I found somebody and I convinced them to believe in me and they helped out. Then I bought them out and I bought my building. Tt was all things that most people told me I couldn’t do that I got done because I had the grit and the determination and the will to do it. There’s always a way, you just got to find the right one. I found the right one and it’s been very successful for me.

Jeff Lenard:
That’s a perfect way to end this, but we also have a trivia question. This is the week that baseball opens up again, so I have a baseball-related and convenience store question.

Carey Bringle:
Okay.

Chris Blasinsky:
You’re already scaring him.

Jeff Lenard:
RaceTrac has ‘Beat the Freeze’ and it’s hugely popular with Atlanta Braves fans. What does the Freeze do? I’ll give you four choices: He sprays ice shavings on fans during the seventh inning stretch, which is welcome relief on those hot days; he bangs a drum and shouts let’s go Braves during the games to freeze batters; in between innings he races with a fan; or he awards every fan in a section with a free Freeze?

Carey Bringle:
I would say he probably awards every fan in a section with a free Freeze.

Jeff Lenard:
He probably does that too, but he runs a race with a fan during the seventh inning stretch. He gives the fan something like a 40 or 50 yard head start. YouTube it and watch ‘Beat the Freeze.’ It’s classic how he overtakes people.

Carey Bringle:
All right. I will go look up the Freeze for sure.

Jeff Lenard:
Thank you for joining us today.

Carey Bringle:
Thank you for having me guys. I appreciate it.

Chris Blasinsky:
And thank you everyone for listening to Convenience Matters. Uh, if you want to listen to more, you can find us on your favorite podcast player, and we appreciate you listening to this episode. We also invited Matt Damon, but of course he was busy. So we’re going to keep trying.

Speaker 1:
Convenience Matters is brought to you by NACS and produced in partnership with Human Factor. For more information, visit convenience.org.

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