Owner/Operator Zebbie Carney talks to Travel Track about intent, approach, influence and the growth of a business in regards to his restaurant: Eugene’s Hot Chicken in Birmingham, Alabama.
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00:38 I just think people are always looking for authentic.
00:40 Yeah.
00:41 Authentic in terms of clothing.
00:43 Yeah, when I think about where we started
00:45 and how we started, we started with a food truck
00:47 going to breweries.
00:47 Yeah.
00:48 So you know--
00:49 So that influenced it, OK.
00:50 Yeah, that really influenced--
00:51 Got it, OK.
00:52 And even before then, when we was just popping up,
00:55 doing pop-ups at Eugene's Hot Chicken,
00:57 we started-- the breweries was the first one to say, hey,
00:59 come here.
01:00 Do a pop-up here.
01:01 So we've got real relationships with those breweries, man.
01:05 So we want to support them as much as they would support us,
01:07 because they just as part of our success as anything else.
01:11 And it's the whole experience.
01:15 You know, when people come here, I
01:16 want them to try local beers.
01:17 I want them to try a very unique soda.
01:20 I want them to try the food, because it's
01:22 the total experience.
01:23 It's more than just us putting a plate of food in their face.
01:26 Yeah.
01:26 Somebody come into Birmingham, I want
01:28 them to get a whole experience of Birmingham.
01:30 I want them to get it right here in our restaurant.
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02:03 And it's a whole chemistry thing.
02:04 It is.
02:05 And it's also an instinct thing.
02:06 It is.
02:07 Could you talk about the balance
02:08 of instinct and the recipe?
02:10 Yeah, so you know, just being in this industry,
02:13 you know, your palate changing.
02:15 You know, I say my palate grew up a little bit.
02:18 So you know, I wanted to create something that, you know,
02:21 when I'm thinking about each and every menu item,
02:24 you know, what my grandparents enjoyed.
02:26 They passed away, but you know, that's
02:28 my experience with cooking and, you know,
02:30 what they enjoyed at food.
02:32 But could the young people really
02:35 enjoy their food as well?
02:36 So that's the balance I'm trying to figure out.
02:38 Did your granddad get to taste of the food
02:40 you started creating at any point?
02:42 No.
02:42 Oh, all right.
02:43 No, it didn't.
02:44 It didn't.
02:44 So you know, it's just all a memory.
02:46 He passed when I was real young, but you know,
02:48 those are my memories of just food, you know.
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03:10 Once you taste it, you understand.
03:12 But people just can't get their heads past it.
03:14 Yeah, it's that mental thing, man.
03:16 You know, about eating a frog leg that just, you know,
03:18 I can't do it, you know.
03:19 But if I think it tastes like chicken, I'm going to eat it.
03:22 And then after, you're like, oh, man, granddad,
03:24 but you didn't eat it at that point.
03:25 So you know.
03:26 So I don't know.
03:27 I just try to be real unique with the menu items
03:30 and just bring flavor.
03:31 Just think of it like a hot dog.
03:33 You know, people love hot dogs so much
03:34 because you get so many flavors on something so simple.
03:37 Yeah.
03:38 Right?
03:38 And that's what we try to do with the chicken.
03:40 We try to bring so many flavors that you're like, wow.
03:44 I'm still feeling-- from the time I bite it to after,
03:47 I'm still feeling so many different levels of flavor.
03:50 And that's what we try to do with every menu item here.
03:53 It is to keep people like, wow.
03:55 I wasn't expecting that.
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04:20 Is there one item that just pops in your mind
04:23 on your menu in that way?
04:25 Whoa.
04:26 It's a couple.
04:27 You know, for me, you know, it's--
04:29 so if you eat any of our chicken hot,
04:33 you know you get that real unique flavor.
04:35 But if you eat--
04:35 You can ask for a hot chicken.
04:36 You can ask for a hot-- yeah.
04:37 So we got a level.
04:38 So it's mild, hot, hot damn, stupid hot, or just lemon
04:42 pepper.
04:43 Yeah, so that hot, you know you get a unique flavor.
04:45 But if you taste the hot damn, you
04:47 get another level of flavor.
04:49 And then our collard greens.
04:51 And you know, we're from Scratch Restaurant,
04:52 so we like our white sauce.
04:54 You know, we make an Alabama white sauce, you know,
04:57 that's our version of it.
04:59 You know, our white sauce started in Kailah, Alabama.
05:02 And you know, we got a comeback sauce.
05:04 It started in, you know, Mississippi.
05:06 So we got our version.
05:07 But you add your little bit.
05:08 We add our little thing on it and make it ours.
05:10 So you know, it's just bringing that uniqueness
05:13 to this good old fashioned Southern cooking.
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05:34 Could you talk about that building a business here
05:37 from the ground up?
05:38 Yeah.
05:39 So you know, being from Nashville,
05:42 and I started a hot chicken joint in Birmingham,
05:44 people always ask me, do I think I'll be as successful
05:47 if I would have started in Nashville.
05:48 I tell them no.
05:50 Because Birmingham just got a unique ecosystem that, you
05:55 know, I just hadn't seen anywhere.
05:57 In what way?
05:58 And you know, so we started pitching our business.
06:02 That's how we started.
06:03 We started doing business pitching with a nonprofit,
06:07 Rev Birmingham.
06:08 And from there, you know, just they
06:11 had introduced us to so many different people.
06:13 We got our-- found our building through Rev,
06:16 through this ecosystem, you know, a lot of the contacts
06:20 we have, our lawyer.
06:22 So there's a support system.
06:24 It's a huge support system here, you know.
06:27 And I did a--
06:28 I spoke at an event like a couple of weeks ago.
06:31 And the support system here now, it's
06:33 even better than it was then.
06:36 Yeah, some of the things, you know,
06:37 like that we had to navigate through was business license
06:40 and figuring out which accountant to pick
06:44 or which lawyer to pick that, you know, now,
06:47 it's almost a book, you know, here in Birmingham
06:49 that, you know, you can just go step by step, one-stop shop,
06:52 and you can pretty much get all your business advice from.
06:54 I'm like, now, I'm like, wow, you know.
06:57 Eight years later, I'm like, man,
06:58 I wish I had some of this stuff now that people have.
07:01 And, you know, it's so many different entities
07:04 that, you know, they kind of work together just
07:07 to help businesses grow.
07:08 It's impressive.
07:09 It's pretty impressive what Birmingham got going on.
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07:15 So Birmingham's too small to have any bad restaurants.
07:34 All I'm going--
07:35 I like that.
07:36 Yeah.
07:37 It's a lot of great food here, but I
07:39 think it all complements well, you know.
07:41 And like from us, what we was trying to do, you know,
07:43 we got James Beard Award-winning chefs here, you know,
07:46 until you also got restaurants that
07:48 have been, you know, a staple in the community for 60, 70 years.
07:51 You know, so you really can't--
07:52 So it's history.
07:53 Yeah, it's a lot of history here.
07:54 So, you know, we couldn't take from that, you know.
07:57 We can only add value to that.
07:59 So our whole goal was just trying to add value to that.
08:01 And what I'm seeing here now is just more and more restaurants
08:05 adding value to the already great culinary scene
08:08 we have here in Birmingham that can rival, you know,
08:10 some of the major cities.
08:11 Yeah.
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