It’s always difficult when you get a hankering for a certain savory something, and it’s just not available. For example, just yesterday I called my brother as he was driving through the local Chick-Fil-A to pick up his lunch. A Chick-Fil-A, for you of the untutored masses, is one of the world’s best fast food items, and it’s pretty much unavailable Out West, where I live. Of course, wanting something is much worse when you can’t have it.
Barbecue is one of those specialties that’s highly regional in nature; the BBQ in California is (typically) grilled, not smoked, and it usually consists of Tri-Tip, a cut of beef that, to my knowledge, doesn’t exist on the cows in Texas.
However, Fedex comes to the rescue! You can order BBQ (and other stuff) via the Internets, and have those lovely ribs or whatever on your doorstep the next day.
Jack Stack Barbecue comes highly recommended from a colleague. I haven’t tried it, but he swears by it.
AirRibs is the mail-order wing of the County Line BBQ, which I’ve written about previously. Superb meat, great service. Can’t hardly go wrong, unless you’re allergic to beef. If you’re allergic to beef, then you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog, because you might swell up and die.
Got any other ideas? Add your suggestions in the comments!
1 response so far ↓
1 Hugh Donagher // Oct 22, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Ah, Chick-Fil-A. A business case study in wonderment and awe.
Anyone who has held a lease in a shopping mall (I’ve held two) knows just how impossible it is to negotiate the condition whereby your store can be closed when all the others are required to be open.
Generally speaking, all mall tenants are required to observe the hours of the anchor store that basically owns the mall. In my case, it was a May Company department store, since May Company owned the mall through its real eastate division.
Anyway, that particular lease requirement is virtually an absolute for all tenant stores. Think about it. How often do you walk though a mall and find any stores closed if the main anchor stores are open? Virtually never. And when you do, it’s usually an emergency or unique situation of some sort, e.g., an employee fails to show up to open, for which the leaseholder is almost certainly going to be fined.
Except for Chick-Fil-A.
In observance of their Sabbath, the Baptist-affiliated chain simply will not open on Sundays. Despite this, they are welcome in many shopping malls across the Middle Atlantic, the South and, I guess maybe the midwest.
I don’t know what kind of premiums they pay in rent, or if their total revenue volume (a percentage of which the mall takes) is great enough to convince mall owners to let them in and close on Sundays, but it takes nothing short of an Act of God to negotiate those kinds of terms. Hey, maybe they’re on to something after all!
Theology and politics aside, as an advocate for those in retail being able to to have a life alongside their jobs, I have to give Chick-Fil-A a thumbs-up for sticking to their guns on this one.
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