Coaching background helps owner of Dallas burger spot Maple & Motor

Jack Perkins spent years as a football coach at Kimball High School in Dallas.

Maple & Motor

There is a phenomenon in the world of sports called Coachspeak. Coachspeak is a language, really, borne of the necessity to motivate, encourage, and improve a gathering of athletes in as short a time as possible, from 60 to 90-minute segments of practice after school to two-week spans of two-a-days in a professional facility in Oxnard, California. All coaches speak this language to some degree, and it includes phrases akin to "Just go out there and give 100 percent, and what happens, happens; Do things the right way in practice, and you’ll do them the right way on the field," to the classic "It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game." The phrases are concise, logical, often blunt, and most effective when yelled. They are not meaningless – rather, repeated though they may be from team to team and coach to coach, Coachspeak conveys an overarching philosophy: That if you execute your responsibilities with your strongest effort and greatest focus, you will reap a reward regardless of the outcome.

Jack Perkins, the operator and a co-owner of Maple & Motor Burgers and Beer, spent years as a football coach at Dallas’s Kimball High School, where he also taught English. Needless to say, he’s well spoken in English and well versed in Coachspeak. And when it comes to talking about his restaurant and the highly lauded burgers they’ve been serving for nearly two years, the affable Perkins uses both skills extensively.

“Maple & Motor is just good food, delivered consistently and quickly. It’s not a social experiment or anything like that,” he says. “We just do what a restaurant’s supposed to do, which is put out great food at the right price.”

It’s a philosophy that’s working well for Perkins and business partner Austen Wright, who since opening Maple & Motor in September of 2009, have received numerous commendations from local publications and see their tables packed every day for lunch and dinner thanks to an old griddle, a year of hard work and experimentation, and a dedication to doing things the right way. Which, of course, means such things as asking customers not to sit until after they’ve placed their orders at the counter, refraining from letting children run wild, or stopping a few drinks short of becoming obnoxiously drunk, among other policies that might range from picayune to principled to problematic, depending on the customer’s perspective.

“Larry Brown, the basketball coach (in the NCAA and NBA), his philosophy could be summed up as 'do things the right way.' And we do things the right way. And we’ll do things the right way even if it pisses you off. Because people walk in the door, they only think of things in their box – some of them walk in, and they know they want to sit down right now. Well, you sitting down right now is not the way we do things; it’s not the way we do things because we’re obstinate, or because we’re assholes – we do it because it’s the best way to manage what today will be 200 to 250 people between 11 o’clock and 1:30 in a restaurant that seats 55 people,” Perkins says. “There’s a right way to do it, and we’re doing it the right way, whether you like it or not. And sometimes our customers don’t like that, and that means they’re going to go somewhere else, and that’s cool with us too. There are six million people in the Metroplex and I need about 2,500 of them a week to make the money I want to make. I do that and I figure there are about that many people that like the way we do things. The Chevy dealer isn’t trying to sell you a Rolls Royce, and we’re not trying to give you something that you can get elsewhere, if that’s what you want. We’re not trying to shoehorn ourselves into your sensibilities. Our customer service here is over the top – it just may not be the way you like your service.”

As it is, however the customer may prefer his or her service, the burger they serve at the small “grease-stained tribute to low-class cool,” is a little more flexible, where customers can order their half-pound, hand-formed patty (and yes, it can be doubled up) medium rare or well done, and have a varied selection of toppings, with all the mainstays such as lettuce, tomato, onions, and a selection of cheese, but also including such options as fried eggs, grilled or pickled jalapenos, and chili, among others. The buns are toasted on the pre-buttered grill, and the fountain not only has IBC Root Beer, but also sports “Dublin” Dr Pepper (the producer in Dublin, TX, which produces Dr Pepper made with real sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup). It’s all been minutely considered, and reconsidered, by Perkins and Wright, who only opened Maple & Motor after deciding that they had indeed perfected the product they wanted to sell.

“We spent a year with that griddle in the garage cooking burgers; hundreds and hundreds of hamburgers. You know, trying to perfect the technique and thinking about things and tasting and saying ‘that’s not right or that is right,’” Perkins says. “Our initial thoughts were that we would cook these burgers on the griddle, and then we would toast the bun in its own fat. Well, that just didn’t work out right. So then we thought we would try toasting the bun this way and toasting the bun that way. The details are as miniscule as taking the butter and putting it on the bun and then putting it on the griddle or putting the butter on the griddle then putting the butter down on the bun, which is what we do. We put the clarified butter on the griddle so it’s hot when the bun hits it, so it grills it immediately. It’s all the little things we wanted to work on.”

What all the little things amounted to was an Everyman’s restaurant, a place where any member of any demographic could feel welcome – assuming they follow the policy of doing things the right way – and would want to return. As Perkins notes, “We have billionaires that come in here, and then we have people that come in here and literally count change.” It’s not a question of preference or bias, but rather an issue of logic. It’s really no surprise that Perkins’ desert-island book is Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, and one can’t help but think that if she and Larry Brown were to observe how Maple & Motor is operated, neither would have a reproachful word. It’s a unique system, and it operates as it does only as long as its functionality merits.

“Take fine dining, where you serve from the left and pull from the right. Well, if we were a fine dining restaurant and we found that it was better to do just the opposite, we would do it that way,” he says. “And what we have as a result is people who’re really happy here. Today, at any point during the day, you can look up and half of the restaurant will be people who I have seen already in the last seven days. Or twice, or three times. You have people who eat here four times a week. We don’t recommend that, for health purposes (laughter), but yeah, they’ll be here.”

And what results is a restaurant that succeeds and reaps the benefits from the style of operation. There aren’t any radio stations dedicated to discussing its merits, or why they’re right or wrong, but there are plenty of Yelpers with strong opinions on the matter. Regardless of opinions, though, Maple & Motor is going to feed 200-250 people for lunch today in a restaurant that seats 55 people.

And that’s pretty strong evidence that, yes, they’re doing things the right way.