Blue Ridge Country July/August 2021 - 63

FLAVORS
though he jokes that he majored in business and minored
in Saturday night, he had very little free time. He had a
wife and child by then, and with the help of his parents,
he leased and ran a restaurant in Marion, Virginia, called
The Virginia House.
" I'd hate to try to do without a college education, " Pal
told us. " I almost had a double major in accounting and
economics. " He finished his bachelor's degree in 1955,
took $10,000 he had saved from The Virginia House,
borrowed another $10,000, and opened that first Pal's in
Kingsport, 65 years ago.
Always an innovative thinker, Pal dared to challenge
the traditional notion of the American hamburger.
" You take a hot bun and you take a hot piece of meat
and you put cold pickles and cold ketchup and cold mustard
on it, and that's three different processes, " Pal said.
" Why not mix all that together and heat it so you've got
a hot product going on a hot product? You don't have
something cooling it down, and you've got one step instead
of three or four. "
That avant-garde approach resulted in the megacondiment
combination of ketchup, mustard, pickle relish,
and spices that seasons what is known today as the
Sauceburger.
Pal often said that he was in the manufacturing business.
" Just like GM takes metal and rubber and glass and
makes cars, we take meat and buns and condiments and
make Big Pal hamburgers. "
The company is in the education business, too. Employees
are drilled in such vital facts as how much chili
goes on a hot dog through the use of flash cards. Employee
training programs at Pal's lead the industry, as
do the company's low turnover, health ratings, speed
and accuracy.
In the 1980s, when Pal was considering the design
of his drive-through Pal's restaurants, he turned to old
friend Tony Barone. They were dining at Skoby's when
Barone drew a concept, upside down, on a napkin. Pal
told him to go no further. The first sketch, he thought,
was perfect. The fiberglass hamburgers and hot dogs that
adorn the buildings are made by a boat manufacturer in
Elizabethton.
Today, Pal's World Headquarters is located on the old
Skoby's property in Kingsport. In front of the building are
metal sculptures of most Pal's menu items, another Tony
Barone creation.
Pal Barger's connections in Kingsport go back several
generations. His grandfather, George Barger, was the city's
first Chief of Police. And Pal has generously supported his
hometown. Kingsport's popular Carousel, the scoreboard
and field house at Dobyns-Bennett, and Northeast State
Community College's Pal Barger Regional Center for Automotive
Programs are among his philanthropic projects.
As we talked about his life and heritage, we asked Pal
how his nickname came to be. " My dad played in a city
basketball league in Kingsport, for Kingsport Drug, " Pal
remembered. " They made me a uniform, when I was two
or three years old, and they would take me out at halftime,
put me on their shoulders, and I would shoot the
ball. I was their mascot, and they called me their Pal. "
As he sat behind a desk shaped like a hot dog with
painted-on mustard, chili, and onions, Pal dispensed
what is perhaps his most valuable business advice of all:
" You've got to have fun with what you do. If you don't,
you'd better find something else to do. "
During that last visit to Pal's World Headquarters, we
asked Pal what he typically ordered when he is a customer
at one of his own restaurants.
" Most of the time, I get a small chili burger, " he answered.
" For some reason, the small chili burger has a
different flavor than the large one, even though it's the
same ingredients on there. I'll move around to the chicken
or chipped ham. And for breakfast, I'll get a sausage
biscuit and cheddar rounds. And then for milkshakes, I
like strawberry. "
And, as it turns out, long before we had heard of COVID-19,
Pal Barger had created the perfect business model
for the pandemic. Almost all of those 30 restaurants are
drive-around, with no indoor seating at all. Pal's employees
embraced mask-wearing early on during the pandemic,
and they offered to sanitize customers' credit cards.
Oftentimes, at those restaurants, the person
at the pickup window will say, " The car
in front of you took care of your order. " We
haven't done any formal research, but we
hear these stories so much that we wouldn't
be surprised if Pal's customers lead the nation
in this kind of generosity. It's yet another
way in which Pal Barger's kind spirit
lives on.
Fred and Jill
Sauceman
are frequent
customers of
Pal's #5 in
Johnson City,
Tennessee.
JULY/AUGUST 2021 63
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2021

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