09/04/2026
So yesterday we posted the text my mom sent me about a girl she works with who had apparently heard The Backyard recommended by three different people, in three completely separate conversations, over the same weekend.
Today two women walked in and one of the first things they asked me was if I knew Debbie.
Well, yeah. That's my mom.
It took me a second, and then I asked if one of them was the girl from work Mom had told me about. The one who kept hearing about The Backyard.
She was.
Her name is Sabrina, which I didn't know until this particular moment.
And she was with Lisa, who used to work with both Sabrina and my mom.
So I got to tell these two women I'd just met that I had posted a text message about one of them on the internet yesterday.
Thankfully, neither of them seemed particularly alarmed by this.
Instead, we took a selfie so I could send it to Mom, because obviously this story needed photographic evidence.
The funny thing is, that would have been enough for one day.
But then another couple came in and told us they'd finally decided to come because their neighbors kept telling them they needed to check out The Backyard.
Then another couple told us they'd found us on TikTok while they were sitting there donating plasma.
Which is certainly a new answer to “So how'd you hear about us?”
And this just keeps happening.
We've been open long enough now that we're used to meeting people who are here for the first time. What we're not quite used to is how many of them arrive because somebody else has already been talking about us.
“All we've heard are good things.”
We hear some version of that all the time now.
And I don't really know what to do with that other than be incredibly grateful for it.
Of course people tell us they had a good time while they're here. I'm standing right there. It's a little harder to tell the owner his weird little restaurant sucks when he's looming over your table, and considerably harder when he may still be holding your food or your tab hostage.
What I've always wondered is what people say after they leave.
What do you tell your friends? What part do you describe? When somebody asks where they should go this weekend, what makes you think of us?
We don't get to hear those conversations.
But lately, the people on the other end of them have been walking through the gate and telling us.
That's the part that gets me.
We can post pictures and make videos and do all the things businesses are supposed to do to get people's attention. But we can't make somebody tell all their neighbors they need to come here. We can't make three unrelated people recommend us to Sabrina over the course of a weekend. And we definitely couldn't have planned for somebody to stumble across one of our TikToks while sitting in a chair donating plasma and decide, yeah, we need to go there.
That's all happening when we're nowhere around.
And apparently it's happening a lot.
So to everybody who's been talking about this place after you leave, recommending us to friends, sending somebody a video, telling the new person at work where they need to eat, or whatever else you're doing out there...
Thank you.
We don't get to hear most of it.
But every now and then, one of your stories walks through the gate.
And that's pretty damn cool.
