at the end of the day there's nothing like grabbing a drink at a bar where everyone knows your name and they're always glad you came which is why it's weird that people would be drawn to a place like Dick's Last Resort where the servers go out of their way to Haze their customers like a high school bully so how did a restaurant where bad service is the point grow into a minor culinary Empire with several imitators well today we're getting a table at Dick's Last Resort the restaurant where the staff is rude to you before
we geted started be sure to subscribe to the weird history Food Channel after that please leave a comment and let us know what other weird restaurants you would like to hear about okay no more diing around Dick's Last Resort is a casual dining theme restaurant where the staff all act like a bunch of well not nice people who would ever think of such a thing well dicks was founded in 1985 by a guy named Richard Dick Chase Chase was a filmmaker who made his name filming 1973's noo a compelling docy drama about the Irish Republican
Army and in 1983 he made a documentary about the Hell's Angels that was financed by the late Grateful Dead axeman Jerry Garcia but it wasn't very successful in fact none of Chase's films were very successful which might be why he segwayed into the restaurant Biz Dick's first attempt to break into the food service industry was a fine dining restaurant located in Dallas much like his movies Dick's restaurant was unsuccessful and it drove him into bankruptcy not the type to give up easily dick tried to salvage his business but this time he decided to ditch the
fine dining and go with something a little more him the second time around Chase created Dick's Last Resort the idea as the man himself once put it was to create a compendium of every beer joint I ever got drunk and threw up in to achieve that effect he redressed the restaurant with mismatched fixtures and Furniture he bought at garage sales paper tablecloths sawdust floors and wacky Decor typical of kitchy chain restaurants like tji Fridays and Uncle Mo's family Feed Bag in Chase's own words dicks allows me to be an Institutional iconic clast it's an absolute
reflection of the bad boy side of my sensibility and perhaps as a nod to that reflection Dick's mascot a learing party animal and a tacky Hawaiian shirt who appears on a dizzying array of merchandise is Loosely modeled on Chase himself people loved dicks which is to say Dick's Last Resort was a huge success in fact its owner claims the place made him an atrocious amount of money and it would quickly expand into a chain What attracted people to dicks well it could have been the drinks being a bar Dick's menu included plenty of cocktails with
risque names like Sucker Punch Dick's red rocket and the money maker as well as shots like the trash can shooter and the Lemon Drop It Like It's Hot Shot there's also the big dick super margarita the little dick Margarita the basic and a whole selection of boozy milkshakes for when you feel like puking ice cream on the other hand it may have been the food that people liked dick selection of grub is fairly standard American comfort food including several different types of Nacho plates fish and chips chicken wings steaks mac and cheese pasta and a
whole lot more if you're planning to go there however be warned that several of the menu items are laced within uendo like Dick's huge 12-in wiener so maybe don't bring the Little League team there after a big win but diners have plenty of options when it comes to goofy cocktails and carb heavy American Cuisine the primary appeal of dicks is the restaurant's unique atmosphere and that atmosphere is in a word bizarrely hostile you want something sweet at the end of your meal sir as alluded to earlier dickstick is that the servers are trained to be
rude if not outright insulting to their customers in a fun way of course at least that's the idea what does it look like in practice well if you're order ing a dicks you better have a thick skin and a good sense of humor because your server is going to be sarcastic and abrasive they'll also try to humiliate You by doing things like making you wear a large paper chef's hat with an insult scalled across it there's no way to tell what the insult will be but they're typically laced with as much sexual inuendo as the
menu including burns like easier than Community College and B on more wieners than ketchup the serving staff may also try to bully you into wearing a ridiculously large Bib and then make fun of you for wearing it In fairness you did walk right into that one and if you're going to ask them for extra napkins or straws you better be sure you want them thrown at your head because the weight staff is likely to Pelt you with them in the spirit of faux hostility it sounds like a crazy business model but it's not unprecedented durgen
Park a Boston restaurant founded in 1827 had long encouraged its staff to be Surly with customers as a tribute to its own 19 century atmosphere CIO La paracha in Rome has had its waiters curse at its customers since 1941 its name even means cio's profanities which would be an awesome name for a breakfast cereal a waiter named Edsel Ford Fong managed to become famous for being the world's rudest worst most insulting waiter while working for decades at Sam wo's Chinese restaurant in San Francisco and Chicago hot dog stand the wiener Circle has been openly hostile
to its patrons since 1983 huh guess dicks truly was a last resort despite promoting its Surly staff like a star attraction the hostility is meant to be all in good fun there are some pretty firm limits on what the servers at Dicks are allowed to joke about for starters the staff is forbidden from referencing things like a customer's race religion gender or gender identity in their insults they're also not allowed to use any vulgar language which is kind of ironic when you think about it to make sure employees understand the rules and how to work
within them everyone who works at Dicks goes through an online training course before they start and then attends weekly meetings to hone their skills they're also trained to read the room according to former CEO Mark buer who was once the head of dicks the company has long recognized they have three types of customers those who love to play along with the rudish dick those who like to watch it without engaging and those who prefer to eat without being bothered at all if you fall into that last group then it might be worth asking yourself why
you're eating a dicks but you can still go there knowing the weight staff will be doing their best to be accommodating and leave you out of it of course there's more to dicks than just being insulted by the person delivering your chicken wings for example they're known for regularly staging parties that celebrate obscure holidays like UFO Day or Christmas in July for that last one they put up a Christmas tree let the patron sing Jingle Bell Rock and give you a $100 prize for the tackiest costume not real dollars dicks dollars which you can only
spend at the restaurant but hey that's still not bad dicks has also been known to celebrate Father's Day by having a shirtless dadbod contest which is exactly what it sounds like dads get up in front of the restaurant strut around without their shirts on and then one of them wins A Fistful of dicks dollars luckily if your father doesn't feel like testing out his own sense of body positivity in front of a bunch of strangers dicks will still give him a free meal speaking of which if you're really hungry for a free meal try Dick's
big meat challenge your foes consist of a house salad chili cheese Nach CH a 12-in wiener double portions of mashed potatoes and broccoli and two large steaks and you'll have to eat every last bite if you manage to pull it off your meal is free but you have to pay to clean the back seat of your Uber dicks restaurants are also equipped with Dix TV it sounds like a channel on the parental block list but it's actually just promotional programming including three rotating segments real world dicks which focuses on real life humorous interactions between diners
and the weight staff dicks quickies a car T about the wild exploits of the dicks mascot character and a Showcase of local musical acts that have been invited to play at a dicks location the wild success notwithstanding sometimes things were hard on dicks for example in 1986 Chase was sued by his investors twice the disgruntled money men were Robert and Steven Schiff who ponied up a ton of dough for dicks as well as chases other restaurants including the West End Oasis and Moline Barn and Grill in their first suit the shifts claimed that chase had
misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars in company money which he spent on items for himself Chase argued that he had the authority to spend that money as he saw fit but the shifts weren't buying it they also weren't done yet less than a month later the same group filed a second suit claiming trade infringement in a nutshell that means that they thought he was stealing ideas that belonged to Dick's Last Resort as a company and transferring them to his other business Endeavors dicks also got sued by the the Mall of America in 2021 for abandoning
their location at the mall after it closed down during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 the court ultimately ruled that dicks was at fault and awarded the mall $680,000 in Damages but just proves the old saying don't be up well you know in 1995 dicks made plans to expand into Europe starting with a location in London's Covent Garden but those plans got tossed like so many ketchup packets and napkins and the London location closed down and was sold off just one year later starting in 2016 the company also shut down a whole string of locations including
ones in Newport on the levy Kentucky Orlando Florida Columbus Ohio Baltimore Maryland and Boston Massachusetts it's not entirely clear why the seemingly profitable locations were shuttered but news reports claimed it was due to corporate financial problems even though his likeness still appears on their merchandise dick himself got out of the dicks business in 201 19 selling the entire franchise to Deja Vu Services Incorporated the operator of over 130 strip clubs around the world huh sounds like it was meant to be the franchise is now down to just 12 locations but there may be a hope
for dicks yet for one the insult your customers gimmick remains popular enough that it was copied by the australian-american Karen's Diner restaurant chain founded in 2021 and even more encouraging Dix itself has recently announced plans to open two new locations in Florida Florida one in Orlando and one in Daytona Beach so it may not be the last resort after all just don't let them trick you into wearing the bib so what do you think would you ever eat a dicks let us know in the comments below and while you're at it check out some of
these other weird history food videos from weird history [Music]
