NIKKI DUGAS

BARBECUTIES
E 6th St & Brazos St
Austin, TX 78701

“I told the girls we’re going to start letting the newbies, the trainees, share the tips because, in most restaurants you’re training, and even though you’re doing most of the work and your trainer is behind you, the trainer gets all the tips. And I just think that’s ridiculous. I mean you’re doing everything. So I just told the girls we’re going to do like a pay it forward, more like a welcoming, and let everyone share the tips.” – Nikki Dugas

Nikki Dugas, a recent college graduate, opened a barbecue stand on Austin’s vibrant Sixth Street in May of 2007. Known as the Barbecuties, the stand employs only women and sells brisket sandwiches to hungry night owls from Thursday to Saturday. Dugas, who learned to cook and barbecue with her parents as a teenager, is proud that the stand is female owned and operated, and thinks that more women should get involved in barbecue. Although operating a cart is difficult at times, Dugas and her employees find it rewarding. She hopes to expand to a full restaurant in the future, but for now insists, tongue-in-cheek, that Barbecuties are “Not Just a Piece of Meat.”

Listen to this 1-minute audio clip of Nikki Dugas talking about how the girls interact with customers and passersby. Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Nikki Dugas
Date: September 26, 2007
Location: Barnes & Noble Bookstore, Austin, TX
Fieldwork Director: Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt
Fieldwork Team: Melanie Haupt and Carly Kocurek

Produced in association with the American Studies Department at The University of Texas at Austin and the Central Texas Barbecue Association.

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Melanie Haupt: We’re here with Nikki Dugas of Barbecuties. Nikki, could you please state your full name and date of birth, please?

Nikki Dugas: Charity Nicole Dugas, August 23, 1982.

Great, thank you. So, to start out, can you please, um, tell us how Barbecuties got started?

Yes, I can. Um, we got a permit on Sixth Street and my sister and I were wondering what we were going to sell, and we went through the whole line, you know, gross hot dogs, wurst, you know, tacos, and then we both thought about my dad’s barbecue, so we decided we were going to name it TD’s after my dad. He’s Tom Dugas [Laughs]. And we talked with him about it and he was like, that is not a good idea on Sixth Street, you’re not going to sell anything. You’re two pretty girls, why don’t you just use it. So, we decided to use it. So, we had the girls wear little red dresses.

And so the Barbecuties name was between you and your sister. You—

No, the name was a disaster. We, um, first it was Grills Gone Wild, and then it was the Smokettes, and it wasn’t until I was having a conversation with the owner of Best Wurst, you know, those guys on Sixth Street; they’ve been around a long time and him and I were just discussing, you know, what to do on Sixth Street, and we were throwing back names and he named us. So, he came up with the Barbecuties.

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That’s pretty funny. So, um, I’m just going do a little exposition for people who hear this who aren’t familiar with Sixth Street but it’s basically, like, a strip of nightclubs and bars, right? I think that would be the best way to describe it.

And a few restaurants.

And a few restaurants. It’s kind of like an entertainment district.

Comedy club. Dueling piano bars.

Drunken frat boys.

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Why don’t we talk about the barbecue first? Um, so, what kind of—what do you sell and, um, how do you prepare it?

Well, actually, um, I have a full-time job. So, what we do is I get up around five. I put the brisket in at six, and then I go to work. And then I come back around noon and take it out and check on it, because we actually have a propane smoker. I probably shouldn’t have said that, but [Laughs] a lot of restaurants use electric, you know, and we use propane, so—

And they hide it?

And they hide it, but I’m not, because I’m a woman [Laughs].

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You told me that you, um, had a mentorship under Charlotte [Finch] at Iron Works Barbecue? Can you tell me a little about—a little bit about what she taught you?

Well, it was really first my dad, and then whenever I thought about doing the barbecue, I went to Charlotte and talked to her about it. And she basically just said, “Don’t let people know you’re a woman” [Laughs]. And I’m like, “What? I’m going to be in a red dress on Sixth Street.” So, um, she just said—well, she just said that most people don’t like to hear that a woman is running a barbecue restaurant. So—

Why do, why do you think that is? Just your own personal opinion.

Um, I guess for some reason barbecue is supposed to be a man’s thing. I don’t know, like the woman had prowess over the kitchen, so he took the backyard, I don’t really know why it happened. Um, and which is weird too, because it’s really easy. It’s really hard to mess up smoking a brisket. You know? You just keep it in the oven long enough, or the smoker long enough.

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Um, have you ever encountered any, um, problems with being, you know, young women down among a bunch of rowdy drunks?

Definitely. Well, I mean, you know, they, especially drunk guys, just think that they can just touch whoever they want, you know, especially on Sixth Street. So, we have, um—we have bouncers outside of Buffalo Billiards who, I mean, we just have to make a hand gesture, and they’ll come over and tell them to walk down the street. So, we have that going and, I mean, the girls—I really encourage them to tell people to fuck off if they don’t like them. You know, I mean we’re very sweet, we’re nice, until people get rowdy or inappropriate with us, you know. Then it’s go time. And we also keep a concealed weapon on—no, I’m just kidding.

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Well, so this—this might be a slightly more difficult question. But, um, how would you answer, um, critics who might say that you’re, um, you know, selling sex, or selling the female body, or using sex and the female body to sell barbecue?

Wow, you know, I haven’t actually thought about that. Well, just because we keep such a clean-cut image I thought, you know. Um, most people down there really like it, so I haven’t really come across anyone who doesn’t. I mean, outside of our cart it says, “Tips for our boob jobs,” right, and people love that. And then we’ll get a lot of people that walk by and shake their heads, you know, and say that’s awful, you don’t need those. We get people saying that all the time.

About the boob jobs.

Yeah, commenting on our personal boobs and what we have and don’t have, and, um, but it’s funny because in our original logo it says, “Cuties, not just a piece of meat” on the bottom. So, for me it’s just sort of like a joke for us, you know, we’re all feminist women that work there and, um, the “tips for our boob jobs” just get us more tips, basically.

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And I wonder if—if—what would happen if you said, you know, “tips for—

“Our rent.” We say it all the time too when guys come up. We’re like, “This is actually for our rent, you can tip us or not,” like, walk on, you know.

Or, tips to cover day care. Or, maybe not college girls. Or, tips to cover books.

Yeah, tuition.

And I wonder what kind of response you would get.

Well, we wouldn’t have as many tips, that’s for sure.

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So, how do you divvy up the tips among your employees?

It’s half and half. It’s always two girls that are working, unless we’re having someone train, and then it’s three. And it’s just, you know, divided by three, divided by two, that’s it. I mean, it’s a team effort there all the way. They have to set up two hours before; um, they have to bring the cart down there; they both have to take this, you know, ton cart off of a trailer together. It’s dangerous. It’s scary, you know, especially for girls who maybe have never done anything like that. You know, I mean they have to get the gloves on; you know, they’re bending over in the short skirts; it’s really funny, but, I mean, it’s all a team effort. So, I really encourage that.

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It sounds like the work. I mean, particularly as you were describing setting up the cart, like is a really intensely physical job. Um, have you found—how does that work when you hire people and they think they’re going to be, you know, just serving food and then they have all this manual labor to do?

Well, I try to prepare them. In our ads I say you’ve got to sweat your ass off in a little red dress, you know. And, I don’t put on the ads you have to lift fifty pounds, but when I’m interviewing them I talk to them about it, because it’s definitely something they have to do. I just make sure that they know they’ve got to be really physical and, you know, they can’t have fake nails—they cannot [Laughs].

I’m imagining horrible fake-nail-popping-off scenarios [Laughs]. Have you had employees you’ve hired that haven’t worked out because of—because of the level of labor?

Um, maybe my sister [Laughs]. But, so far, no. No, that’s awful to say; she helps out so much; she’s a really hard worker. But, yeah, I mean, I think it gets tiring for them, and especially whenever we get downtown, I think they put a lot of it on Darren, you know, and he’s so sweet, he just won’t let us carry things sometimes, you know. But, it’s funny setting up on Sixth Street, even though we’ve done this, you know, at least a hundred times now, you know, we still have people every single time ask us for help. They’re always men of course, either, you know, homeless men looking for money, or just people on Sixth Street that see these girls in these little red dresses trying to, you know, put up the cart. And we get it two or three times a night, every night, even though we know what we’re doing, and it looks like we do, you know.

What do you tell people when they offer help that you don’t need?

“No, thank you. We have it. Thank you, though.” I’m always very sweet and very, you know, um, you just have to be really, like, no thank you, always, you know.

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I know you had said that, you know, one of the first things you thought of was your dad’s barbecue. Can you talk a little about, you know, your dad’s barbecue and kind of how his barbecuing affected your own and also kind of what that was like when you were a kid, or—?

Oh, yeah. Well, um, I mean he has barbecued forever with—you know what the Little Smokies [grills] are? Yeah, so that was always a big part of our life. Whenever we didn’t have much money, he would always, you know, he’d have like the thirty-dollar Little Smokey, and then like as his business grows, you like, you know, you see the smokers getting bigger and bigger, you know. Um, and he—his barbecue—he almost cried when I told him I was buying a propane smoker [Laughs]. And then he came up and visited and saw it and like fell in love, because it was so beautiful, you know, it’s all stainless steel, and it’s a vertical smoker. Um, but he—he’s, you know, like a traditional smoker. He, you know, only uses, um, oak, you know, and he’ll stay up all night—or not all night; he’ll go to sleep; he’ll wake up, you know, every couple hours and get out there and blow the smoke, you know, and clean it up and poke the meat [Laughs]. You know. Um, so that’s what I learned from him. And he was sad about it. He’s sad about my whole process that I do. But, that’s OK; he likes how it tastes, so.

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And, this is jumping back a little bit, but where did you get your cart?

I had it made in south Texas. Yeah, I did.

Who made it? How did you find a business that does that?

Isn’t that weird? I know. I went on eBay and I looked at all these people that were selling them, and I found a guy—you know a few guys that were making it—so I just called all of them, asked them, you know, their general prices, and said, “I have, you know, a tricky little thing that I need done.” Because they’re used to doing, you know, carts four times our size, you know. But, the Sixth Street regulations are four-by-five foot. So, it’s just ridiculously small, you know. So, um, anyways, him and I came to an agreement and I sort of designed it, and he, you know, made—he fixed a few things. We were originally going to have a smoker inside the cart, which is just so stupid [Laughs]. And he was like, “Nikki, we can’t do that. I mean, first of all it’s going to, you know, set your place on fire, and it’s going to be too hot.” So, we ex-nayed that.

Where’d you get the idea for the design of it? Like the part you see—to do it looking like a cabin and things like that?

Um, well, I think what I did is I just, I went to a lot of restaurants before, obviously, and I looked at the outside and the inside, and you know, they all had a very rustic wood look. And we wanted everyone to know that we make our own food, you know. We don’t buy it and resell it. It’s ours; it’s Barbecuties, you know. So, that’s where I wanted to have like a very authentic look.

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So, is there anything about your business that you didn’t get a chance to tell us about that you think is really important for us to know, or important, you know, for the record, or any of that?

Um, not really. I mean, for the record, we’re women owned, and women run, and barbecue loving. That’s pretty much it.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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