White Castle native Brandon Landry grew up the son of a sugar cane farmer and dreamed of playing college basketball. But when he tried out for LSU in 1997, he was promptly cut.
Events then unfolded that dramatically changed Landry’s life. He was called back a month later, which led to a friendship with fellow walk-on Jack Warner. They didn’t see much playing time over the next few years, but they sprouted a business idea that combined their love for the game with the need for a career.
Today, their company, Last In Concepts, operates eight restaurants and employs 770 people in south Louisiana. It all started on a return trip from an away game, Landry says.
“We were talking about these sports bars across the Southeast, and how we really didn’t have the place for sports in Baton Rouge,” he says. “We wanted to open a spot next to campus—a cool place with pretty girls and cold beer.”
The name was a nod to dreamers and everymen: Walk-On’s.
They knew nothing about the restaurant business, so Landry and Warner began a training program that included working at such local eateries as Mike Anderson’s, Mellow Mushroom and Chili’s.
“We wanted to learn everything we could,” he says.
They wrote a business plan in an LSU class, earned a C, but kept pushing. After college, positive feedback for their sports bar concept was in rich supply, but financing wasn’t.
Banks turned them down right and left, until Fidelity Bank structured a deal with the Small Business Association that helped secure an anchor spot in a new development at Burbank and Nicholson. Walk-On’s opened in September 2003, and fans poured in.
“We know we weren’t very good in the beginning,” Landry says. “We made a lot of mistakes, but we tried to learn from them.”
