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If you’ve driven down Jake Alexander Boulevard within the past three months, you might have noticed Darlene’s Place restaurant has fallen victim to fowl play.
But new owners, husband and wife Mike and Lynn Winegarden, don’t plan to fly the coop — they’ve put all their eggs in one basket with a new chicken restaurant.
In February, Mike and Lynn opened Ted’s Famous Chicken, the first non-family franchise of Ted Brigg Sr.’s Winston-Salem restaurant, Ted’s Kickin’ Chicken.
It’s true, all they serve is chicken with a few yummy appetizers, side dishes and homemade desserts. So what makes Ted’s chicken kickin’?
Contrary to popular assumption, Ted’s, staffed with about four people at any given time, is not a fast food restaurant. All the shipped-fresh, breaded, hand-fried-and-dipped wings, halves and sandwiches are made to order — be patient, please — with Ted’s special sauce (that comes mild, extra hot or “suicide”). The Winegardens said they pride themselves on cleanliness, and they’re not afraid to show off their kitchen.
Although they do sell bottled beer and the place is decorated with a sports theme, complete with NASCAR and NCAAparaphernalia, Ted’s is not a bar. Families are welcome. There’s even a children’s menu to accommodate the little ones.
When you walk in, they’ll take your picture and put it on their wall for you and everybody else to see. And, if you stop by on a regular basis, they’ll call you by your name if you don’t mind.
The dining room can hold 52 cozily, and there’s a jukebox that plays any kind of music imaginable. Or, if you like dining al fresco, there’s a 30-person deck with umbrella-topped tables, Winegarden-built bar stools and a fountain. On Bike Night Tuesday, bikers have told the proprietors that, while they’re on the deck, they feel like they’re on the strip at a beach.
And even though the cuisine is not fast food-style, the prices are. Mike said a chopped chicken sandwich with sauce and toppings on a sesame kaiser roll and a side order of baked beans or potato salad can cost as little as $3.75 as a daily special.
They’ll rent you the restaurant for a private party or fix a hearty lunch ahead if you phone in or fax your order. Anything to appease new customers and friends.
Mike said they “want people to come in, bring their families and enjoy themselves,” the same way he and his wife and her colleagues did when she worked at Seicor in Winston-Salem. They remember places where, “on Friday nights after work we’d just meet … to shoot the breeze, have a couple cold ones, have some wings and some supper and go home.”
Originally, “home” for the Winegardens was Michigan, but they’ve been in North Carolina for about 20 years and currently live in Lexington. But that doesn’t stop either one from putting in plenty of hours five days a week at their eatery.
Operating Ted’s is a team project, they explained. They enlisted the services of “very, very dedicated friends” and their son Bill to help put together the place. But, Mike will be first to admit, the whole chicken restaurant business was all his wife’s idea.
Lynn had been working at Seicor in Winston-Salem about five of the 20 years she’s been in purchasing, but that never smothered her entrepreneurial spirit. The lively co-owner of Ted’s “always likes to do something on the side” and has sold everything from birdhouses at arts and crafts shows and flea markets to “The Lazy Habanero,” a line of hot sauces and dips Mike still sells out of their home in Lexington.
“I’d been checking into franchises for years, ever since Colombo Yogurt came out, but they’re so unaffordable,” Lynn admitted. “Mike and I, we’re just middle-class … and we didn’t have a lot of money to put into it.”
Then, on an evening last year when she and some of her colleagues were relaxing at one of their favorite after-work spots, Lynn noticed a sign on the restaurant’s van promoting franchise opportunities. She asked the head waitress for details and got Ted’s phone number.
“This (Ted’s) was affordable to us and we like it, so we thought, “Let’s go for it,” she said. “I called (Ted) and said, ‘I’m Lynn Winegarden, and I’d like to get together with you and talk about starting a new restaurant,’ He told me to come down … at a time when Mike was off from work. … We ate and talked and the next step was doing a business plan for a small business loan..”
Now that the ball was rolling, the Winegardens needed to find the perfect location. They had different sites in mind — Forsyth, Lexington, Thomasville, High Point and Salisbury — and in November started inquiring about different buildings.
One Friday night, they drove to Salisbury for dinner at Darlene’s.
“You can only eat so much barbecue in Lexington, so we’d usually go out of town for dinner,” Mike said.
As they approached the building, they noticed there were no lights or any activity.
“Then we saw it was ‘Closed due to family illness,’ but there wasn’t a lease sign on it,” Lynn explained. She was sorry to know someone in Darlene’s family wasn’t well but still looked for a “for lease” sign. She knew, and told Mike, it would “be a great place to put a Ted’s.”
She doesn’t know “what possessed me… to drive by here again,”after Christmas but there was a lease sign — her sign.
Lynn sat in the parking lot and called the number on the sign from her car. She didn’t realize she was sitting right next to Patterson Paving, the company that owns the building. Darlene and her husband Jim came out to show Lynn the restaurant.
“She told me that a lot of people had been inquiring about the place. But our loan hadn’t been approved yet, and we didn’t want to lose the site.” Darlene said they would have to select to whom they would lease the building. They selected the Winegardens.
“I don’t know about a miracle, but I definitely think it was meant to be. I’m a firm believer in that if it’s meant to be, it will (be) and if not, there’s a good reason why it wouldn’t,”Lynn said. “And that’s how we handle things with the restaurant — if it’s to be, it will, but we’ll do everything in our power to make it work.”
Their building faces one of the busiest streets in Salisbury, but Mike wishes at least one-tenth of the traffic he sees drive by would stop in for lunch or dinner. At least for now, making things work at home and at the restaurant means Mike has to keep his job as a production associate at Kimberly-Clark.
“We’re doing OK. We’re keeping our head above water,” Mike said. “The only thing we’re worried about right now,” Lynn added, “is making the bills.”
They get regular business from Food Lion workers and employees from local businesses. They’d even gotten a request to cook for the VA Hospital’s 1,000-person company lunch but had to refuse because of limited resources and the desire to stick to the standard of serving fresh food. For the Winegardens, owning their own business is more about quality and camaraderie than money.
“When it’s filled up and the music’s going and everyone’s laughing and cutting up and having a good time and we’re here with them, it’s the best feeling in the world,”Lynn said, smiling. “The worst feeling in the world is at noon when nobody is here.”
Mike said people probably won’t believe it, but they didn’t go into business to become millionaires.
“We just did it because we like people, and someday, hopefully, when we’re ready to retire, it’ll be something to just keep us going.”
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Ted’s Famous Chicken Restaurant hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Call 638-2429 or fax 638-2369 for more information.
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