Hiring

 Both Thai Taste and Big Chill are looking for additional staff. Due to staff shortages, Thai Taste will close for lunch on July 29th and dinner on July 30th.

Big Chill

 In case you want to hit Big Chill one last time, Mark extended the closing date until tomorrow, 11/18. Says he has more product that he can easily fit into storage so staying open an extra 2 days to lower inventory.

Big Chill

Big Chill closes today for the season so stop by for a traditional Carbondale snack. Will likely reopen for 2025 in February.

Mural

 New Saliki mural going up on the south Wall of The Big Chill. Artist expects to have it done by Tuesday, in time for next weekend's SIUC Family Weekend. As far as I am aware, this is the first mural designed for selfies in town.

Big Chill Ribbon Cutting

 Wazo's Big Chill will hold a ribbon cutting on March 21st at Noon. Just reopening with a cool new sign and name was not enough. 

Big Chill

 According to the sign in front, spring is just around the corner. The Big Chill reopenes for the season this Saturday, probably just in time for a deep freeze next week.

Big Chill Sign

 The old Dairy Queen sign in downtown Carbondale has been replaced with a brand spankin' new Big Chill neon sign. The plan is to light it up for the first time this Saturday, before the Lights Fantastic parade starts.

Too Much Open Space

 I was talking with another retailer and we both agreed that downtown Carbondale, among other problems, has too much open space. Not green space, which would be fine, but parking space, which is rather suprising given the compaints I have seen about the lack of parking in downtown. I think more the complaint is the lack of "free" parking in downtown. 

The north end of the Strip is separated from the south end but a large stretch of parking. Walk past Old Town Liquors and you have Big Chill nee Dairy Queen sitting alone in the middle of a comparatively large parking area before getting to the Varsity Center. On the other side of the street, one you pass Pag's Pizza, there is parking, then the Amtrak Station, then more parking before reaching Walnut.

Once Booby's reopens, that will help matters some as it will help pull customers from the south end towards the north, but that is still a whole lot of empty space for potential customers to walk past.

Big Chill

Should be getting a new neon sign for downtown's Big Chill, to replace the removed Dairy Queen sign. The new one uses font very similar, though not identical, to the removed sign. Plans are to have it in place by October.

Big Chill

 The renamed and revamped Dairy Queen, now named "Wazo's Big Chill" reopened this past Friday and crowds have been good so far. Both times I drove by there were people sitting on the wall along S. Illinois and a line of people at the window. 

I expect Big Chill to do much better than the relaunch of El Greco some years ago. Despite the long lines of people waiting to get into El Greco when it announced it was closing, and then again when it re-opened, there was never enough demand for the restaurant's menu to keep customers coming back multiple times. Ditto for Mississippi Flyway. Despite the lamentations upon its closure, people did not eat there often enough to keep it open.

Dairy Queen/Big Chill does not have that problem. The restaurant did not close because of lack of demand but because the franchisor yanked the license. The DQ's biggest problem was always finding enough staff to operate. Barring a major change in the menu, (Blizzards will have to have a different name as that is a DQ trademark), Big Chill should remain successful.