After only five years in Knoxville, Archer’s BBQ is opening their fifth location in town.
Bearden, West Knoxville, Karns and Powell all host one of Archer’s locations, and downtown Gay Street is next on the list. They will move in as part of Hatcher Hill’s redevelopment of the old J.C. Penney building accompanied by Babalu’s Tacos & Tapas and Maple Hall Bowling Lanes.
Mary Katherine Wormsley, a representative of Hatcher Hill, described the work put into this $8 million project.
“Everything is brand spanking new,” Worsmley said. “It’s a large project to wrap people’s head around. Downtown is of course a growing market and the amount of activity and momentum it’s seen in the past couple of years has been great.”
Restaurant owner Archer Bagley also spoke optimistically about downtown expansion and the new location.
“Downtown is blowing up in the next year or so,” Bagley said. “The foot traffic alone coming out next to Mast General store — that’s going to pay the bills and then some.”
The successful rapid expansion of Archer’s franchise is due to his unique business model. After leaving their original location in Farragut, Archer’s switched to outsourcing from a commissary kitchen in the Bearden area.
“The secret is that we took the whole kitchen out and put it in one place, so now when we build out a restaurant we don’t have to build a whole new kitchen,” Bagley shared. “We can go into just a retail space.”
Bagley’s business partner and executive chef Clark Cowan loves the control and consistency that the commissary system provides.
“We had to rework everything that had ever been done and come up with a way to do it where we have absolute, total control here,” Cowan said. “Every food in every store is exactly the same because it leaves here every day.”
However, this consistency doesn’t require skimping on quality.
“We can tell you anything you need to know about any food we have,” Cowan said. “We know what goes into everything. There are simpler ways of doing it and ways to cheat, but we just don’t, which limits the items that we can have.”
Despite his confidence in Archer’s cuisine, Cowan voiced uncertainty about the new location.
“Every little bitty thing can put cogs in the wheels,” Cowan said. “All of the stores are basically a cookie-cutter model of each other. Downtown is a weird space, so our ‘exactly this’ isn’t going to fit in the ‘exactly that.’”
Archer’s soon-to-be location on Gay Street represents the major commercial shift away from “the Strip” and into the core downtown area.
Competing with more upscale restaurants along the main street of downtown doesn’t worry Archer’s. They believe they will be able to make their own niche and that people who are already fans of their BBQ will support the new location.
“Our price point is going to be less than what’s on the strip in a lot of places, and downtown it’s unheard of,” Cowan said. “It’s a simple concept. We don’t have a lot of stuff, but what we do have is highly addictive. Once you eat some, you’re gonna come back.”
