MINNEAPOLIS — The man known as America's Rib King has held a prestigious presidential appointment, appeared on "Oprah," and seen his name on a stock ticker (Nasdaq: DAVE). But "Famous Dave" Anderson was once plain-old Dave Anderson, son of a Choctaw from Oklahoma and an Ojibwe from Wisconsin, who struggled in school and didn't know what he'd do for a career.
An inspiring sales training transformed the shy teenager into a confidant pitchman. After selling all sorts of products — oil and gas conditioners, terrariums, Dixie cups, silver-and-turquoise jewelry he'd made — Anderson turned to food.
Though his restaurant experience was limited to cooking venison fry bread sandwiches at powwows, Anderson's first barbecue shack, Famous Dave's, outside Hayward, Wisconsin, was an instant hit. The detail-oriented restaurateur curated the playlist from his massive blues collection and classed up the bathrooms with crown molding. And diners lined up to feast off garbage can lids, an homage to Anderson's first homemade smoker.
Since then, Anderson has competed on TV cooking shows, won countless contests and awards, written multiple books, and been inducted into the National Barbecue Hall of Fame. Through many ups and downs, Famous Dave's grew into a chain with more than 100 locations and 30-plus grocery goods on retail shelves nationwide. After handing the reins to Wall Street and, later, divesting entirely, Anderson returned a few years ago as the business' brand ambassador and "keeper of the flame." With his son and daughter-in-law, Anderson also runs a second local barbecue concept, Jimmie's Old Southern BBQ Smokehouse.
Following his recent induction into the National Native American Hall of Fame, the longtime Edina, Minnesota resident reflected on taking his "famous" moniker from printer's mistake to reality manifest. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How was your identity as a Native American shaped by your parents' forced assimilation?
A: Both my parents were taken from their families at young ages and stuck in Indian boarding schools. They were beaten for speaking their language. My dad can remember getting beaten so bad that his skin would break. And they had to eat soap — not just get their mouths washed out. I always tell people that this didn't happen in Abraham Lincoln's day, but this generation. My parents.
Q: And it was your father, a Southerner, who instilled you with his love of barbecue?
A: When I was growing up, in Chicago, he seemed to know all the empty parking lots with a guy out there with a 55-gallon drum smoker sitting on the corner. When the ribs were done, the guy would take 'em out and wrap them up with newspaper. I never got into the restaurant business so much as I was born into it.
Q: What was your first restaurant experience?
A: To raise extra money for the family, my mom had an Indian fry bread stand that we would set up at powwows. My first restaurant was nothing more than a tarp-covered lean-to — that's where I learned how to cook.
Q: How did Zig Zigler's sales training change your trajectory?
A: In school, I thought I was the dumbest kid in class. It wasn't until years later that I found out I have ADHD, which explains why I was always bouncing off the walls. The training was really more of a full-force, change-your-life course. It wasn't just, "This is how you sell," but "This is how you live — you've gotta think successful." So I ended up with a semi's worth of these oil and gas conditioners, and I never sold a case. I had no clue what a car was. I was 19 years old.
Q: You fared better selling terrariums and dish gardens to florists — until the Chicago blizzard of 1979 decimated your business. What did you do after moving to Minnesota?
A: I got hired by American Can and they gave me what they called the armpit of the world — northern Minnesota and North Dakota — as my territory. I was selling Dixie cups and Marathon towels and tissue. I had to go call on little mom-and-pop Dairy Queens and such, as there weren't really franchised restaurants back then. Within one year, I took my last-place territory to Number One.
Q: You then made a similar turnaround to the tribal enterprises of your mother's community, on the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation.
A: They had a cranberry marsh, construction company, a logging company, a printing press, a gas station, an auto repair center, a grocery store and a bingo operation. All of them were losing money like water flowing through a sieve. In three years, we turned all the businesses around.
Q: But the real jackpot was bingo?
A: I'd never seen people get so wound up — people really look forward to their bingo games. They would come in for five bucks. We were giving out jackpots of $1,000 and getting a couple hundred people. So I said, "What if we charged $100, and we gave away $20,000?" We not only sold out, we must have had a couple hundred people banging on the door. It was the biggest thing, so I kind of got a reputation for being a promoter of big bingos.
Q: After a Bush Fellowship and a master's degree from Harvard, you co-founded Grand Casinos, one of the country's largest gaming companies. Why did you leave?
A: We had built eight casinos. On the day that the Stratosphere opened in Las Vegas, my wife and I were sitting down below watching the fireworks and that's when I told her, "I don't think this is where I want my kids to think Dad hung his hat in life." At that point, I had started Famous Dave's and it was starting to be a success.
Q: An unlikely success, considering its location.
A: When I told people I was building a rib joint, they would laugh. They'd say, "Are you crazy? In Hayward, Wis.? There's nothing but Swedes and Norwegians. You should go down to Kansas City or Memphis or someplace where people really know barbecue." There were only 2,000 people in town, but by the end of that summer, we were serving over 6,000 people a week. It drew from six states.
Q: How did you name the place?
A: On the road out of Hayward, there was Dave's Guns, Dave's Boats, so I was going to be Dave's Famous Barbecue. Then I got my cards printed and they made a mistake: It said Famous Dave's. I was really mad. We were getting ready to open and my wife said, "You should just leave it."
Q: That was a great decision — you've since said that taking Famous Dave's public was a bad one. Why was there so much turnover in the C-suite?
A: They never understood that Famous Dave's wasn't just a restaurant company, more than it was a lifestyle. Barbecue is a lifestyle.
Q: You also did a stint as a public servant, leading the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Why did you return to the private sector?
A: I had wanted to jump-start the economic opportunities in tribes through entrepreneurship and creating leadership academies. But I just found myself blocked along the way, because of politics. I realized that I could get more done being a Native American entrepreneur than I could being in a political appointed position.
Q: But then your planned return to Famous Dave's didn't pan out?
A: It was devastating. They kind of did a Steven Jobs on me. With a publicly traded company, they thought they didn't need the founder. I always understood that barbecue is a people business. It's not a quarterly earnings report. We had some Wall Street-type CEOs who had different ideas and almost tanked Famous Dave's.
Q: Like the former McDonald's exec who got rid of the garbage can lids!
A: I joke that he tried to McRib Famous Dave's.
Q: So you started … another barbecue restaurant?
A: There was a time when I was emotionally, legally, financially totally out of Famous Dave's — totally separated. And that's when I started doing Jimmie's Old Southern, because barbecue is my life.
Q: What do you hope your legacy will be?
A: If Famous Dave — or Dave Anderson as Famous Dave — gets remembered for anything, it's that despite all of my failures, and that I had to get sober, we can all bounce back and we should never, ever give up. It doesn't matter where you come from, or what you've been through, everyone has the seeds of greatness within them and everyone can achieve incredible things.
Q: How often do you eat barbecue, by the way?
A: I have ribs every day — it's my life!
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