Dickey's Barbecue Pit : Shane Ables on Running Multiple Dickey's Barbecue Pit Stores

Shane Ables walks through his Dickey's Barbecue Pit franchise review as a multi-store operator. He joined the brand in March 2003, started buying stores in 2013 with two locations, and has since grown to four. His business partner is Stacey Van Dyke, who has been with Dickey's for 26 years - starting as a general manager before the opportunity came to buy stores, partnering with Shane and building the multi-store operation together. What Shane spotlights is the people side of running a Dickey's. He describes employees as work family - the kind of relationship where the operator and the team will give the shirt off each other's back when needed, treating the business as a multigenerational human enterprise rather than a transaction. That philosophy carries into the customer-facing culture too: he asks employees to flag new visitors so he can have a conversation, and he frames a key part of running a successful BBQ restaurant as turning customers' day around through how the cashier interaction goes. On the franchise-economics view, Shane comments on COVID-era market dynamics - he hates seeing other businesses fail, but the market reset has created opportunity for brand-quality operators to find good people willing to invest in stores and grow the brand. He notes one of his stores opened in 2000 and is now in its 21st year of operation, with same-day-one customers still coming in - the mark of a counter-service brand that built relationships over two decades. Watch the video for Shane's view of the multi-store Dickey's operator economics, the partnered-acquisition route into franchise ownership, and the people-and-customer-relationship culture he sees as the engine of a barbecue restaurant that compounds over the long run.