BusinessReport.com

The service motto of Walk-On’s Bistreaux & Bar is “We don’t play,” and in their years as members of the LSU men’s basketball team, co-owners Jack Warner and Brandon Landry pretty much didn’t.

But nonscholarship athletes work as hard as the starters when the crowd isn’t watching. They go on the same 6 a.m. runs, participate in the same drills and lift weights just as often. Perhaps most important, they mimic the tendencies of upcoming opponents in practice.

So when LSU defeated Ole Miss 64-60 at home to clinch a share of the 2000 Southeastern Conference regular-season title, Landry was as excited as anyone to join his teammates and a swarm of fans in the celebration on the Pete Maravich Assembly Center court.

Unfortunately for him, the marshals running security didn’t believe the 6-foot white guy was a player, even when he lifted his warmup shirt to reveal his jersey. Landry needed a trainer to vouch for him before he could get back to the locker room. Such are the indignities in the life of a walk-on.

“It can be the greatest thing or the worst thing,” says Warner, who played under head coaches Dale Brown and John Brady.

Brown, he says, treated everyone the same, from the janitors to the star players. “Coach Brown took a negative connotation and elevated it. I was really proud to be a walk-on.”

Brady, however, conveyed “a lack of dignity and respect.” The “walk-on” name for the restaurant was as much a show of respect to Brown, who retired after the 1996-97 season, as it was a diss to Brady, who was fired Feb. 9 and has since been hired by Arkansas State.

In their travels around the SEC, Landry and Warner noticed every city seemed to have one place that was sort of the unofficial home team bar and restaurant. Baton Rouge has The Chimes, which is just across the street from the North Gates but isn’t a full-on sports bar; TJ Ribs, which isn’t that close to the school; and Mike Anderson’s, which has a connection because its owner played football for LSU, Warner says.

There seemed to be a gaping hole for a place adjacent to campus that embraced the local passions for good food, booze, and Tiger sports. They readily admit it wasn’t a brilliant idea; it was a crushingly obvious idea. The first concept for the restaurant was literally drawn on a napkin while flying back from a game at Tennessee.

“That was the scary thing,” Landry says. “If this is such a no-brainer, why hasn’t anybody in this city done it?”

In 2002, they began taking their business plan to bank after bank. As Warner remembers, the bankers’ eyes would light up and they’d say something like, “Wow, we love it. We can’t help you.” Maybe it was the risk, since most restaurants fail in the first year, or maybe it was just the fact that a couple guys in their 20s with little experience were asking for $3 million.

But Fidelity Bank and the Small Business Administration eventually came through, and Walk-On’s opened on Burbank Avenue and Nicholson Drive on Sept. 9, 2003. When Georgia came to Tiger Stadium on Sept. 20 for a huge SEC football game, it was the proverbial baptism by fire.

“We really didn’t have a soft opening,” Landry says. The service wasn’t great, and he says there are people who came in during those early days who still haven’t been back. The lesson, he says, is not to try and rush people through. No matter how busy, attention to detail is key.

“They don’t care if it’s your first day,” Warner says. Sports metaphors can be trite, but Warner says the restaurant business really is a bit like basketball in the sense that it’s all about teamwork and the fundamentals, doing simple things the right way every time.

Landry and Warner have also expanded their holdings, with Landry running Walk-Ons and Warner supervising their growing downtown empire: The Roux House, a bar and restaurant with frequent live music on the patio that opened in January 2005; Happy’s Irish Pub, which opened in October 2005; and Schlittz & Giggles, which opened in January with a menu of pizzas, calzones and paninis in a sports bar atmosphere.

Again, they’re not reinventing the wheel. Baton Rouge didn’t have an Irish-themed pub and didn’t have anyone selling pizza by the slice. They just saw the obvious opportunity downtown and went for it, and Warner wonders aloud how many more places he has to open before the rest of the business community catches on.

“I never thought I’d stay in Baton Rouge,” Warner says. “I always feel like I’m the last of the Mohicans of my friends.” On one hand, he’s grateful for the low-hanging fruit Baton Rouge has for the plucking. While his friends are grinding away in big cities, he’s the king of 3rd Street in shorts and flip-flops. On the other hand, it’s a little embarrassing that a place like Des Moines has a more vibrant downtown than Baton Rouge.

“We’re not a city; we’re a big town,” Warner says. “The more I talk about it, the more frustrated I get.”

Landry says a new Walk-On’s, in the former O’Henry’s on Coursey Boulevard just west of South Sherwood Forest, should be open by the summer, perhaps as early as June 1. It’s a little more than half the size of the 10,000-square-foot behemoth in the shadow of Tiger Stadium and will seat about 200—including tables on the second-floor balcony.

While a Darwinist shakeout in the local restaurant business might be on the way, business is up at Walk-On’s, and Landry figures the new place will benefit from the area’s business traffic during the day and numerous residences at night.

Both men expect to branch out. Walk-On’s could work across the southeast, most likely as a corporate-owned entity, while Happy’s and Schlittz might have legs as franchises, perhaps first in New Orleans, Mobile, Ala., or Pensacola, Fla. Warner envisions a dual concept with Happy’s and Schlittz in the same building. Whatever happens, getting the startup money might not be so hard this time around.

“People are starting to come to us now,” Landry says.