It was first opened back in 1980 by Jack Hodges operating as more of a bait and tackle shop than restaurant. It opened soon after Hurricane Frederic hit in the fall of 1979.
Renovations from destructive Hurricane Sally are finally now complete at the Orange Beach location and the 40th anniversary celebration once planned for Sept. 19 will finally kickoff Saturday, Nov. 14, at all three locations. From noon-4 p.m. guests can enjoy $4 bushwackers and a cheeseburger and fries for $4. Live music will go on all day in Orange Beach, Gulf Shores and Fort Morgan locations. Tacky Jacks also has a cigar bar on the same property as the Cotton Bayou location.
Vice President David Evans, CFO Ken Kichler and Marketing Director Susan Sizemore gathered at company offices before Hurricane Sally to reminisce about their time with the company. Evans and Sizemore have been there more than 20 years and Kichler about 14 years.
Buddy Skipper bought the Orange Beach location in 1998 and along the way added one near the end of Fort Morgan Road, Tacky Jacks II, and in the early 2010s built the brand-new Tacky Jacks in Gulf Shores on the Intracoastal Waterway. The Gulf Shores location is a franchise owned by a large group of people including Skipper and his family. It is also operated out of the main office on Canal Road in a strip mall also owned by Skipper.
Through the years, storms have had an impact on how the group grows and how it improves facilities at the various restaurants.
“From where it started its grown organically through storms,” Evans said. “A storm would do something to it and something new would be added on. The whole configuration would change with the rebuilding after the storm. As the tourist business has grown, we’ve expanded to accommodate seating, we expand kitchens to meet the demand.”
Kichler said the Fort Morgan location mostly gets water damage on the bottom floor where there’s a bar and a gift shop. When he first came on board in 2006 It was cleaning up from Hurricane Katrina the previous August.
“Fort Morgan came about in ’05 shortly before Katrina,” Kichler said. “The people that had bought the marina, the whole giant development out there they spent a huge amount of money on rocks to put in piers and things like that and every bit of that was washed away. It was high water but we didn’t get any in the store just the gift shop and bar downstairs. It needs cleaned every now and then anyway.
“I don’t know that we’ve ever, with all the storms we’ve been through I don’t know than we’ve had anything other than a little wind driven water in that store at all. In Orange Beach, we get water in the downstairs once every two years at least at a minimum.”
Those storms in Orange Beach have led to many changes in the facilities there from a new outside deck after Ivan to closing the downstairs except for special occasions or events.
“Hurricanes do have different effects,” Kichler said. “I got here in ’06 and Buddy was in the process of redoing the kitchen upstairs which the kitchen then was where the bathrooms are today. It was 20 percent of the size of the kitchen today. And we’ve done it four times since then.”
A number of storms in one year helped spur that change.
“I came on during the middle of the first one and breakfast was served downstairs at that point and we operated two entirely different restaurants with two different managers,” Kichler said. “Once we did this renovation, we said we were going to move breakfast upstairs. When we got it done Buddy said we’re not going to do that. People are used to going down there. I said we have 40 seats down there and we have 175 up here.”
A busy storm season a year later helped finally propel that final change to have all food service upstairs.
“Went all the way through the summer of ’07 and didn’t move it,” Kichler said, “In ’08 we had three tropical storms and the last one being Labor Day weekend. Each time the tropical storm would come in we would have to go in and move all the equipment because the breakfast would flood. The third time it came up the hill I went to Jimmy (Beech) who was our maintenance guy for so many years and said let’s go tell him we are not putting that equipment back in the kitchen and we’re moving breakfast upstairs. We fought it for two years and after the third time Jimmy going in and saying this is too much work so we moved it upstairs.”
THAT ICONIC NAME
There are several stories about how Tacky Jacks got its name but it’s obvious where the Jack part came. Several stories have emerged about how it actually became Tacky Jacks.
“Jack Hodges is the original owner and a friend of his told him your name’s Jack and its tacky so let’s call it Tacky Jacks,” Sizemore said.
Kichler said he has heard only one story about how the name developed in all the years he’s worked for Tacky Jacks.
“The story we heard was a vendor came in selling tackle because it was a tackle shop, too, and gas and all of that when it was much more of a that than a restaurant,” Kichler said. “They came in and had an invoice and asked what’s the name of the company. He said Jack’s Tackle and the wife or somebody else said Tacky Jacks. That’s the version we heard.”
“That’s the version I’ve heard from day one was the vendor threw it out there,” Evans agreed.
Hodges himself told a different story to Fran Thompson of the Mullet Wrapper in a spread about the iconic place, its name and how it came about. The story came out on Sept. 9 announcing the Sept. 19 celebration that was crashed by Hurricane Sally.
He told Thompson that a longtime customer admonished Hodges for coming down hard on a young employee over some invoices that were in disarray and told him he should call it Tacky Jacks Tackle Store.
“I said that sounded good to me,” Hodges told Thompson. “It ended up being Tacky Jacks, and all of a sudden I became Tacky Jack, which probably suited me a little bit. Anyway, that’s how it all started.’’
And, here we are 40 years later and celebrating that iconic name, no matter how it came to be, and the legacy of Tacky Jacks being a community partner and friend through service by the owners during that time. And, being a place to have some fun.
“We ramp up every year and we have all these new employees,” Evans said. “One of the first things I tell ‘em is ‘guys, one thing you need to know is that every single customer that comes here, when they hit these ramps to come into our restaurants, they’re in a wonderful mood and all they want to do is have fun.’ That’s the mentality we have. They are coming here to have fun.”
