THE BANGER'S ARCHIVE

May 2026 BEN STORY

MAKE SOME MORE TABLES

Self-doubt is part of the entrepreneurial journey. You've got to have belief in yourself, you need to believe that it can work. But that is spliced with a lot of moments like, oh damn.

I remember it was the first week. I'm an entrepreneur, so I'm looking at the bank accounts, and I called the bank and said, "Hey, I think there's a mistake with the numbers." And they said, "Well, those are the deposits." And I was like, "Oh, Damn!" We made some money. Money had only ever gone "out" of the account. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, at some point we "make" money! It was exciting times, man.

Our biggest challenge was how are we going to deal with all these people? How are we going to feed all these customers? How are we going to design a kitchen big enough?

I remember before we opened I had this contractor, Ronnie Haynes, and he's like, "Alright, how big are we going to make the kitchen?" And I'm like, "Heck if I know, dude. You're the contractor." And he goes, "Yeah, but I just build stuff. You've got to tell me how to do the kitchen." He said, "Well, you've got a financial model, right?" And I'm like, "Suuure I've got a financial model."

So basically you'd look at the financial model and say, alright, how many sausages are we going to sell? How big's a sausage? How many hours are we going to be open? That's literally how we did it. Alright, that's how big the grill needs to be.

When you're doing a financial model, it's all bull, right? It needs to be conservative enough to give yourself a chance to be successful, but optimistic enough that it's not some fantasy. I want to say we did our five-year projection number in the first year. Not cumulative. Just, we thought we'd get here in five years, and that was year one.

Which also meant the kitchen was designed for about a 150-seat restaurant. One of the things that are cheap on a relative basis are tables and chairs. So we had these 40-foot long rows of tables, five eight-foot tables in a row. Each one of those rows seats 40 to 50 people, which is a small restaurant in and of itself. Every couple of months in that first year I'm calling the carpenter up. We need another set of five tables. Another row of 40.

So every couple of months in that first year, I'm basically adding a new restaurant to our restaurant. It's not good. I mean it's good, but it ain't good. Its the best kind of problems you can have.

It was very apparent that it had worked. We hit a nerve, we struck a chord. It completely surpassed all of our expectations.

Want to share a Banger's memory? We'd love to hear it.
Shoot us an email at howdy@bangersaustin.com

May 2026 BEN STORY

THE RAIN DANCE

I want to say it was March, I don't remember, maybe it was May. We had this kick-ass country band playing on stage and this just epic rainstorm rolls through. I mean cats, dogs, and elephants coming down. Our stage is relatively covered so they kept playing. And everybody runs for cover. I'm on site watching it all happen. And then all of a sudden this couple comes out into the rain and they start dancing in front of the stage. It's not drizzling. It's proper raining. And the band goes nuts and they're playing and these people are dancing.

And then all of a sudden people just started coming out and joining in and doing the thing. And it was this dance party in the rain. It was awesome, man. Just one of those moments where I'd stop and think, this is exactly why we do this.

Want to share a Banger's memory? We'd love to hear it.
Shoot us an email at howdy@bangersaustin.com

May 2026 BEN STORY

Brunch & the Brass Band

There was a time when we did these big brass bands for brunch. We had this band for years called the Urban Achievers. They did pop music covers. I used to love coming in on Sunday mornings for it.

Brunch started at 10am, the band started at 11am. I loved sitting down at 10:30am, because by that point we were unbelievably busy. People would start lining up at nine o'clock, a full hour before we opened. By the time 10am rolled around, you had a hundred-plus people in line. A hundred people in line to eat brunch.

I'd come in, get a seat, and just take it all in. There's the pre-music brunch vibe, and it's a good vibe. It's very much like a normal, solid Banger's vibe. But then the band always had the same set list, and if I remember correctly, they would start with Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA." It would take people a little while to get it, because at first it just sounds like brass music. And then all of a sudden it's like, wait, are they playing that song? And then people just light up with delight. These moments of absolute delight over just this completely unexpected but wildly pleasurable thing that you kind of got for free. We're never charging for the music.

I was younger then and I was in the restaurant more, talking at tables. What would happen is we'd have a tremendous amount of luggage come into the restaurant, because Austin was like the bachelor and bachelorette party capital of the world. They'd come in on Thursday and meet at Banger's because it was a big open place you could go to. They were waiting for their hotel rooms and Airbnbs to come online, so they'd sit and drink.

Same thing on Sunday brunch. We were the last stop for a lot of people. They'd bring all their luggage for Sunday brunch, the last hurrah, and then go to the airport.

And almost every brunch, you'd have people decide not to get on their airplane. They were having so much fun they'd just say, I'm staying. Look, you gotta finish a whole mimosa. Terrible ideas seem like great ideas. I think anything's fun if you do that.

But man, those brunch mornings. There were so many of them where I'd just stop and think, this is exactly why we do this.

Want to share a Banger's memory? We'd love to hear it.
Shoot us an email at howdy@bangersaustin.com