It’s Official…
Opening A New Restaurant Checklist
- What sort of food will we serve?
- What kind of atmosphere will we have?
- How will we embarrass people on their birthdays?
- Where’s a good place for a restaurant?
I have to say, though, Texas Roadhouse has about the best way of going about it. Other places tend to have their own version of a birthday song that sometimes fits their overall theme, even if no one can ever understand the song. The servers tend to sing like it was a Nativity Play and they’ve been forced to wear a lobster suit and stand around the manger.
But at the Roadhouse, the servers confer amongst each other to get the loudest, most uninhibited person to lead the proceedings. I’ve actually witnessed it happening – “Chad, you do it. Please? No one can ever hear me if I do it.” They make the birthday person sit on a saddle, pull one of the hanging lights over as if it were a spotlight, and ask anyone who can hear to “give a Texas Roadhouse ‘yee-haw’.”
And, apparently, sitting on a saddle, having a light pointed at you, and being yee-hawed at isn’t enough. Now they’ve got these plastic cowboy hats for you to wear. I suspect the hats are designed for 12-year-olds, as it didn’t really fit on my head all that well (as you can see). The nice thing about it being plastic is that I can use it as a dip holder when next I serve some sort of cowboy-themed chips at my next movie gathering.
Oh, and apparently there’s a video of the yee-hawing somewhere, but I don’t have it. Since I’m trying to move past posting about my birthday, you might never get to see it. I know you’re crushed.
(Picture credit: Jeannie, who’s taken my place as the official photographer of all things Careerian. Pictured (l to r): Me, the back of Jeannie’s mom’s head, Melissa, two-thirds of Wendy’s face, and the back of Jeannie’s dad’s head.)
