Another Knockout In Lubbock’s Chicken Fight

Imagine having the perfect product, in the perfect place, and still having to shut the doors.

We recently lost one of my favorite chicken places, for reasons I do not know. I can tell you this: from the very first chicken sandwich I had there, all the way up to the stuff they were serving just a couple weeks ago, everything was fantastic. The food was cooked perfectly, packaged with care, and handled with the kind of attention you just don’t see enough anymore.

The problem probably starts with the fact that Lubbock is over-chickened.

They were also a little more expensive than some of the other places in town. I’d also guess a lack of advertising probably hurt a lot. When there are umpty-bazillion chicken places fighting for attention, the loudest squawk tends to win (and honestly, this is why I think Raising Cane’s and Chick-fil-A will ultimately win the chicken battles).

I mean, congrats to the owners for not running up huge advertising bills and walking away, leaving everybody hanging, but there’s another side to that coin — those ads might have saved them, too. Sometimes you have to make some noise just to remind people you’re still there.

One of the first comments I saw after the closure news was, “Now we need a Pluckers.”

Ugh. No. No we don’t.

We have plenty of chicken right now. More than plenty. People are eating out less, restaurants are fighting harder for every dollar, and I’d much rather see people pick their favorites and support what we already have than watch Lubbock slowly fill up with empty buildings that used to be chicken restaurants.

A big part of the problem seems to be hubris and the way franchising works. In some cases, a national brand won’t even let you have one store unless you commit to opening multiple locations. That gives you almost no time to test the market and see if the demand is actually there. It also overwhelms those with just one location.

Don’t forget the failed Taco Bueno experiment.

Everybody was excited. Everybody had memories. Everybody swore they wanted it back. Then reality showed up.

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I’m sorry we can’t have every chicken restaurant you grew up with, visited on vacation, or hit up that one time when you were out of town and thought, “Man, Lubbock needs one of these.”

Sometimes the market is just full.

Sometimes we have to admit that more choices don’t always make things better. Sometimes they just make it harder for the good ones to survive.

When it comes to chicken, maybe it’s okay to say enough is enough.

Now, Italian food?

That’s another story entirely...