The Dickey’s Barbecue Pit franchise location in Delaware, Ohio is getting unwelcome attention from the apparent walkout of its entire crew.
UnhappyFranchisee.Com has posted the picture and selected comments below.
A picture of a handwritten sign was posted on imgur.com and linked to from discussion site Reddit.
In just a day and a half, the photograph had generated 1,028,101 views and 800 comments on the two sites.
The sign from the Delaware, Ohio Dickey’s Barbecue Pit franchise read:
ATTENTION: The DICKEY’S crew has QUIT ♥ .
The store is under Staffed & the owner doesn’t care enough about the store to take care of it.
♥ Visit the Lewis Center Store!
We ♥ the Customers!
♥ Ex Dickey’s Crew
What do you think? Share a comment below!
Commenter stay-chivalrous claims to have witnessed the struggling, understaffed Dickey’s:
I was there last Sunday and they had 2 people running the place during the church rush. Things were bad, the line was incredibly long. I gotta hand it to the two people handling it though, they did their absolute best to keep the customers happy and get them moving. At one point customers were helping with things like cleaning the floor in front of the pop machine after the drain clogged in it, collecting up dishes that had fallen on the floor, and more.
To the ex-crew of Dickie’s I say thanks for doing a bang up job on Sunday and holding out as long as you could!
Yelp! Commenter Jeffrey S. also reported problems at the Delaware, OH Dickey’s:
Went to “Dickey’s” because my partner in crime and I were in the mood for BBQ Ribs.
We pulled to the drive-thru and waited and waited.
A server came on the speaker and asked us to hold please. We waited another solid 10 minutes.
Finally a different server came on the speaker and before I could say a word immediately told us they were not only out of ribs, but also out of numerous other mains on the menu.
Excuse me, it was only 5pm and the dinner hour was just starting.
A word of advice .. You only get ONE chance at first impressions .. I wish I could give this joint less than one stars because they FAILED and FAILED miserably.
Some commenters claim to have seen similar occurrences at other Dickey’s franchise locations.
skipzzb wrote:
This is actually pretty weird, almost the exact same thing happened at the Dickey’s in my town a few weeks after it opened.
Maybe one month after it opened there was a sign on the door that said something like “W have been forced to close our doors because Corporate lied to us about the costs of running one of their franchise. send complaints to (some corporate email)”
Dickeys must be a very poorly run company.
Odd_Bodkin wrote:
There was a Dickeys near me that went down a while back — same problem.
Franchise owner didn’t give a rat’s ass, and it went up in smoke (no pun intended) in pretty short order (also no pun intended).
Commenter and Dickey’s franchisee ScumbagSolo claims the problem is that Dickey’s sells franchises to unqualified owners:
I bought a Dickeys Barbecue that had gone downhill because of a shitty [previous]owner.
i bought it from the franchise that had kicked the lady out and took over operations.
I’ve turned that place around. Unfortunately the franchise is trying to expand so fast that they are allowing anyone to buy one it seems.
Some of these owners don’t give a fuck and want to buy a restaurant where they don’t have to do anything and just rake in the money.
I’m sorry but that’s not how it works.
Commenter MnkeyBlast claims understaffing is a corporate strategy:
I was a manager at a dickeys in Dallas.
The only way to get the numbers to met is by being borderline understaffed.
And they “teach” how to.
Commenter no_defaults claims that the problem starts at the top, with CEO Roland Dickey, Jr.:
I actually have a connection with the ownership of Dickey’s (they’re franchises, but there is a single owner of the concept).
The current owner is the son of the man that spent his whole life building the business. The father was a stickler for quality and had very high standards for his franchises.
Once the son took over he essentially said “fuck it, let’s get all the franchise fees we can”.
They loosened the franchising rules and the strictness in product control and essentially just wanted the upfront franchise fee (something like 45K).
That is part of the reason why in the last 10 years you may have noticed a huge increase in the number of Dickey’s, including those right down the street from others.
He doesn’t care.
If somebody wants to open one and will pay the franchise fee, that’s all he cares about.
It will be the slow demise of the franchise, but he’ll ride out the fortune hard.
According to a Delaware Real Estate blog, the Delaware, OH Dickey’s was closed for lunch Monday but was reopened by dinner, staffed with labor from a recently opened location owned by the same franchisee, William Bridges:
…Dickey’s Barbeque Pit in Delaware is not closing its doors.
Yes, it was not open for lunch on Monday morning. But that was an employee issue, not a management issue according to an employee at the Lewis Center location. Employees from the new location have been activated to open the Delaware store in time for dinner [Monday].
This all on the tale of a successful three-day launch of the Lewis Center location in the Kroger Marketplace development at Columbus Pike – US 23 – and Lewis Center Road (8641 Columbus Pike, Suite 240, Lewis Center).
Online commenters state that the Delaware, OH operational problems are nothing new, and that the restaurant had been closed down for an extended period of time at least once before.
Obviously, Dickey’s corporate was not concerned enough with these operational issues to keep William Bridges from opening a second Dickey’s Barbecue Pit franchise nearby, despite the problems with his first.
Also read:
DICKEY’S BARBECUE PIT Franchise Complaints
DICKEY’S BARBECUE PIT Franchise Warning
DICKEY’S BARBECUE PIT: How to Lose Everything in 5 Years or Less (Part 1)
DICKEY’S BARBECUE PIT: How to Lose Everything in 5 Years or Less (Part 2)
DICKEY’S BBQ Is Dickey’s Overselling its Franchise Opportunity?
DICKEY’S BARBECUE Franchise, Jerrel Denton, Roland Dickey Jr. Sued for Fraud
DICKEY’S Franchise: Open Letter to Roland Dickey, Jr.
DICKEY’S BARBECUE PIT Franchise: Roland Dickey Sells to, Then Sues, Registered Sex Offender
DICKEY’S BARBECUE PIT Makes an Unhappy Franchisee Happy… Then Sues Him
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE DICKEY’S BARBECUE PIT FRANCHISE OPPORTUNITY? SHARE A COMMENT BELOW.
Tags: Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, Dickey’s Barbecue Pit franchise, Delaware Ohio Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, Dickey’s crew quits, Dickey’s franchise Delaware Ohio, Dickey’s Barbecue Pit employee walkout, Dickey’s Barbecue Pit franchisee lawsuit, Roland Dickey Jr., Roland Dickey, Dickey’s Barbecue Pit closed, Dickey’s complaints
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I am the guy who replaced that crew. The store was disgusting. The smokers were so caked with grease they couldn't even function properly, you even had to scoop grease out of the grease trap by hand with a metal pan because you couldnt drain them properly. Under the stove, a complete disaster, fryer, fridges, everything was gross. How that store was passing health inspections was beyond me. In a few months my crew and i got it cleaned, the smokers (unfortunately) pressure washed and smoking as they should, and ended up tripling sales. Unfortunately the owner didn't like my work, and I quit when they tried to transfer me to the lewis center store in some attempt to throttle me. The last conversation I had with corporate ended with me saying that I simply refuse to ruin their name. It even got to the point the man overseeing the lewis center location, under the advice of the owner operator, was showing up on my truck day, and taking my product because "I was ordering too much" I pointed at the copies of quarterly inspections from corporate saying I was doing great, no one cared.
After I left, the store was closed within a year. I would do almost anything to have that store back to this day. Shout out my crew, my brothers and sisters, who stayed as others wimped out, and those who replaced them, and put in work to make that store great for one instance, we showed everyone. If in case they ever see this, be proud. We did good.