The dream of late-night enchiladas remains a month from reality.
Although Armadillo Grill has taken up residence in the Bryan Center, the restaurant is still grappling with staffing and equipment problems and has been closing much earlier than expected.
"I came here yesterday for lunch and they were closed," said Trinity junior Matt Whorton, who arrived at the grill at about 2 p.m.
Owner Ben Pace said the restaurant was not prepared for the customer volume it experienced during its first week.
"We're just a little overwhelmed by the business; it's probably double what we expected," he said. Pace added that the restaurant is short-handed, making it impossible to keep the projected hours of 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.
"We tried to hire as many people as we could, but this is a very tough labor market," Pace said.
In the meantime, the restaurant will be open weekdays from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and from 5:30 to 9 p.m. It will only be open for dinner on weekends from 5 to 9 p.m., and during football games.
"We need a little time to get everything organized and figure everything out," Pace said. "We just figured that since we are waiting on our liquor license and we're waiting to get the bar built, we could just go part-time until then."
In addition to staffing woes, restaurant workers are also wrestling with a new point-of-sale cash register system that went online when the grill opened last Thursday.
Although employees are getting the hang of the new machines, Pace said, nothing could prepare them for the confusion Tuesday afternoon, when a server in the DukeCard office went down and the registers suddenly stopped working.
In the middle of the restaurant's lunch rush, managers decided customers should be served. "The best-case scenario was just to give [food] away," said Gary Harrison, a manager at Armadillo Grill. Pace estimated that they gave away $400 worth of food.
"They kind of screwed up my order, but given the circumstances, I wasn't going to complain," said Eric Adler, a graduate student.
The restaurant is still training employees-meaning that food preparation often takes a while and lines of students are routinely seen stretching out the door.
Pace promised that once training and hiring are complete, the process will speed up.
"It's going to be tough to speed up the amount of time it takes to place your order," he said. "But the time it takes from your order to when you get your food, that should be substantially shorter."
James Herriott contributed to this story.
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