How much does the economy play into the success or failure of a starting restaurant business?

Big Shanty Smokehouse is a family-owned and family-operated barbecue restaurant in Kennesaw, Georgia. The restaurant was opened in February of 2008 by Chic Dillard, his wife, Sissy, and their daughter, Shannon. After working in the restaurant industry for so many years, Chic decided that he wanted to start his own restaurant in 2007. At the time, all members of the Dillard family were working in different restaurants, and the family wanted to do something together. One day, on the way home from playing golf with his son in Kennesaw, Chic passed a “For Sale” sign in the window of a small shack, and felt that the building called to him. The Dillards felt that the building looked like a little barbecue smokehouse and the location called for a barbecue concept. The name “Big Shanty Smokehouse” was coined as a way for the Dillards to make the restaurant a part of the history of Kennesaw, as the city was known as “Big Shanty” before the Civil War.