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Homegrown Hits

These restaurants have Dallas roots, and now they’re sprouting all over the map.

Tin Star

tinstartacobar.com

FIRST RESTAURANT

Uptown Dallas, 1999

TOTAL RESTAURANTS 11

IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD Alpha and the Tollway; Coit and George Bush Turnpike COMPANY PHILOSOPHY It started as a taco bar with a Southwestern flair, and later developed its popular cheeseburger tacos and other signature tacos based on guests’ suggestions — “here’s what I like, here’s what my mom used to make, or here’s this crazy idea I have, and we’d be like, OK, let’s do it,” president and owner Mike Rangel says.

EXPANSION PLANS Rangel likes highly dense traffic patterns during the day and “a lot of rooftops around at night.” The company also likes to be close to hospital districts to attract “patients going there, people who work there and pharmaceutical reps.” Also, because Tin Star is popular with the 25-45 crowd, “apartment complexes and condos are good,” Rangel says. The company is looking to open six new locations in 2011, including Denton, Fort Worth, Arlington and somewhere around Northwest Highway and Greenville. “I think we’d do really well over there, and we’d be excited about finding a location,” Rangel says, noting the close vicinity of Presbyterian Hospital and surrounding medical offices. Plus, Rangel says, “Dallas is our home. We would love to have more stores in Dallas.”

What about Lake Highlands?

H&M is coming to Dallas, but it will not open a store in Lake Highlands. And neither will any other national retailer.

That’s the opinion of David Shelton, who speaks not only as a commercial real estate broker but also as a neighborhood resident.

“NorthPark is so close; the Galleria is so close. It wouldn’t ever make sense. That’s the reason Lake Highlands doesn’t have a Southlake Town Square,” Shelton says, chalking it up to our neighborhood’s vicinity to already-established projects, not to mention “demographic hurdles,” he says — “population, incomes, being the main two drivers of a decision. The Lake Highlands demographics aren’t going to stack up compared to Northwest Highway and 75, and some of the other competing intersections.”

Because of the retail meccas west of us, shopping patterns already have been created, Robert Young, says. So what our neighborhood needs to attract more retail and restaurants is some sort of major project that can attract a cluster of stores.

A Lake Highlands Town Center, perhaps?

Exactly, Young says, but the Town Center mixed-use project at Walnut Hill and Skillman is “so dependent on having a great anchor,” Young says, primarily because of the project’s location far from major thoroughfares such as I-635 and CentralExpressway.

If the Town Center does get going, “it’ll go gangbusters,” says Scott Wynne, another neighborhood resident and vice president-finance for ING Clarion Partners, a real estate investment management company.

“There are no bigger copycats in the world than real estate developers. When they see stuff is successful, they follow it. If the Town Center can attract those kinds of people and be a roiling success, then other people will follow suit.”

One of the biggest deterrents for potential retailers is the “overabundance of apartments” in Lake Highlands, Wynne says.

“If you drive them around Walnut Hill andAudelia, they see all the apartments, and they kind of go, uh, that’s a big turnoff.”

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Coveted Corporations

They may be corporate chains, but these companies know how to make us want them.

IN-N-OUT

FIRST RESTAURANT Baldwin Park, Calif., in 1948

COMPANY HOME Corporate offices in Irvine, Calif., (the state where 201 of its restaurants are located)

TOTAL RESTAURANTS 251 in four states (Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah)

CLOSEST RESTAURANT Chandler, Ariz., 1,051 miles

FUTURE NORTH TEXAS LOCATIONS Former Steak ‘n Shake on Central near Caruth Haven; Coit near junction of 75 and 635; Firewheel Town Center in Garland; West Seventh in Fort Worth; Stonebriar Centre Mall in Frisco; The Village at Allen; Hurst; Las Colinas

WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL? Its food is fast, but never frozen: The company touts the fact that every hamburger patty is made fresh at one of its distribution centers. The menu is minimal — three burger options, fries, sodas and shakes — but the restaurant’s loyal cult following evangelizes an entire subset of off-themenu items with names such as “the Flying Dutchman” and “animal-style fries”.

FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH “We are a private, family-owned company We operate all of our restaurants ourselves, and we don’t franchise, so slow growth has always been part of our strategy. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is vibrant, strong, growing and filled with opportunities.We will have everything we need there — from warehouse/commissary and patty production facilities to a large, metropolitan area that those facilities can serve.Long term, we will also be able to serve other markets from that central distribution center.We are now under construction on our first two restaurants — Allen and Frisco. If everything goes well, we hope to open both in the spring. We should also start construction soon on the Caruth Haven site and, hopefully, a few others.” —CARLVAN FLEET, PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT VICE PRESIDENT

EXPERT OPINION

“They’ve been very tight-lipped about their expansion process. What I’ve heard is they plan to open Dallas-Fort Worth with five or six units, and open them all at the same time.” —DAVID SHELTON

“They are a cult dynamo on the West Coast. Anybody that’s been out there, they just love the whole program. Food is good, fresh, quick and efficient.” —ROBERT YOUNG

The cult of off-menu

In-N-Out’s website (in-n-out.com/ secretmenu) acknowledges the existence of its secret menu:

Double Meat “Two 100 percent pure beef patties, hand-leafed lettuce, tomato, spread, with or without onions, stacked high on a freshly baked bun.”

3 x 3 “Three 100 percent pure beef patties, hand-leafed lettuce, tomato, spread, three slices of American cheese, with or without onions, stacked high on a freshly baked bun.” 4 x 4 “Four 100 percent pure beef patties, hand-leafed lettuce, tomato, spread, Four slices of American cheese, with or without onions, stacked high on a freshly baked bun.”

Grilled Cheese “Two slices of melted American cheese, hand-leafed lettuce, tomato, spread, with or without onions on a freshly baked bun.”

Protein Style “Your favorite burger wrapped in hand-leafed lettuce, instead of a bun.”

Animal Style

Coveted Corporations

They may be corporate chains, but these companies know how to make us want them.

H-E-B

FIRST STORE Kerrville, Texas in 1905

COMPANY HOME San Antonio, Texas

TOTAL STORES 329 in Texas and Mexico

CLOSEST STORE Burleson, Texas, 49 miles

WHAT’S THEBIG DEAL? Customers love H-E-B’s highquality products, especially produce, for low prices no customer card needed. And unlike sister store Central Market, H-E-B carries staples like Cheerios, paper plates and 12-packs of soda pop. The company is in expansion mode, but doesn’t have plans to expand beyond Texas, according to an Austin American Statesman article quoting company president and COO Craig Boyan. In the same January 2010 article, Boyan said that the company’s move into Burleson was not indicative of expansion into Dallas: “It really is to serve Central Texas better. If you were going to go into Dallas, you’d put a warehouse in Dallas.”

FROM THEHORSE’S MOUTH “Our Central Market stores are the stores that serve the Dallas area. We have our distribution network that is largely centered in South and Central Texas as well as in the Houston area, and several stores around Waco and Cleburne. Most recently we opened our northernmost store in Burleson, which was a natural progression of growth for us — 15 miles away from one of our existing stores in Cleburne that has a lot of traffic, and we need to relieve that store, and Burleson is a burgeoning community with lots of young families. We’re very proud of Central Market stores in Dallas-Fort Worth area. They’re serving customers well, and it’s working very well for us. We’ll continue to use that format.”

—LESLIE SWEET, HEB DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

EXPERT OPINION “Anybody that knows H-E-B loves them and wishes they were here. They’re what Tom Thumb was to Dallas 20 years ago. They’re a family business, and they’ll adapt a store to the area around it. ... H-E-B has pretty strong coverage throughout the state. You think, OK, Dallas has to happen. On the other hand, they’re thinking let’s be cautious. I think they’re always thinking what’s the trigger that will cause them to address Dallas.”

—MIKE GEISLER

“The move to the DFW market is inevitable. It’s just a matter of timing for those guys.” —DAVID SHELTON

But apartments have a limited lifespan, he says, maybe 30 or 40 years.

“Yeah, they’re rundown — lots of Section 8 housing and crime and code violations but they won’t last forever, and if we have another real estate boom like we did a few years ago, you’ll start to see them come down.”

Even if national retailers won’t pay attention, however, our neighborhood does have the potential to attract new grocers and restaurants. If H-E-B or Trader Joe’s decides to move to Dallas, Lake Highlands won’t be first on their lists, but “would be on their radar and be in their market at some point in time,” Shelton says.

“There are too many people in the Lake Highlands market to ignore. With an anchor grocer concept, you’re dealing with a much different profile of customer than you are with fashion retail.”

It’s a similar scenario with restaurants, Wynne says.

“You go into Mi Cocina, you go into Mariano’s, you go into Picasso’s, and they’re packed,” he says. “I think we’re really underserved, and when you go into those places, the lines there and the people there back that up.”

Wynne is one of many neighbors convinced that a Purple Cow — the familyfriendly burger joint at Preston and Royal would do well in Lake Highlands.

“I’ve only been harping on this, well, for eight years now — as old as my oldest daughter is,” Wynne says.

Any independent restaurant like this would receive a warm welcome in our neighborhood, Wynne says, and some corporate eateries would fare well, too.

“People here don’t mind a chain restaurant, just a not a run-of-the-mill chain restaurant that’s all over the place not the same place you’re eating at in Columbus, Ohio, or Chicago, Illinois,” Wynne says.

Ultimately, though, it will take a shift in retail mentality to change the real estate landscape in Lake Highlands.

“The retailers fall all over themselves to go into the Park Cities and North Dallas and east of Central,” Wynne says. “They just don’t seem to get it — things over here don’t fit into the square box that they have for themselves. There will have to be some pioneers, and then others will follow.”