Popular chain opens Pierce County location, but most folks won’t be able to eat there
Pierce County is now home to Texas Roadhouse, a nationally popular chain famous for its steaks, signature dinner rolls and hourly line dancing. But since this location is on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, you’ll have a hard time getting a table unless you have a Department of Defense-issued ID.
JBLM is a controlled-access installation, which means to get onto the base you need either a DOD-issued ID card or a visitors pass, which you can only get with a DOD authorized sponsor.
“We’re working on being more clear about access on our website and social media,” said Ali Molt, the general manager at Texas Roadhouse. “We’ve felt very welcomed by the JBLM community, and it’s just a real honor to be able to feed our service members.”
Molt has worked for Texas Roadhouse for 15 years and has traveled to work at a location in India. After all this time, she said, she’s not sick of the once-an-hour line dance.
“The team loves it — it brings great energy on the shift,” Molt said. “It’s a few minutes every hour that they cannot worry about running food to tables or refilling glasses. I still love it, even after all this time.”
Every hour, the Texas Roadhouse staff lines the aisles of the restaurant for a choreographed dance to a rotation of songs.
How did JBLM get a Texas Roadhouse?
Texas Roadhouse was brought to JBLM with the help of the Army’s Morale, Welfare and Recreation Program (MWR).
“We have a large percentage of our service members that do live on the base, so we want to make sure we’re doing things to enhance our community for the families,” said Venicia Morse, director of MWR at JBLM. “At the same time, there’s an extended part of our community that lives off the installation, so we want to give them a good reason to come here.”
In addition to supervising the opening of Texas Roadhouse, Morse provided input on the two murals inside the restaurant — one dedicated to JBLM and one that had special input from the Nisqually Tribe.
“The owner of Texas Roadhouse has a superstition about including Native American material in the murals in all of his restaurants,” Morse said. “So it was really special to work with the Nisqually to provide ideas to the artist.”
If you go to a Texas Roadhouse in a more traditional setting, you’ll see local memorabilia from scout troops and baseball teams hanging on the walls. For now, the walls at JBLM’s Texas Roadhouse are largely bare, but Molt said they’ll be filled with memorabilia from JBLM’s Army and Air Force units.
The Roadhouse experience in a COVID world
Molt said part of what people love about the restaurant is the experience, so they’ve tried to bring the same energy a patron would get at the table when they pick up an order to-go.
“That means we’re greeting them with a bag of peanuts and dinner rolls, and even occasionally doing our line-dance outside,” Molt said.
Traditionally, the floor at a Texas Roadhouse is lined with the shells of peanuts customers snack on while they wait for a table. But JBLM’s location is free of shells and the oak barrels they’re usually stored in for communal use. Now, the peanuts are served in prepackaged, COVID-19-safe bags.
Since opening in late September 2020, JBLM’s Texas Roadhouse has been through a number of changes. First, it opened at 50% capacity, but less than a month later, new COVID-19 restrictions forced the restaurant to offer to-go only. Now, it’s up to 25% capacity, which means 65 guests at a time with no more than five guests per table.
The Louisville, Kentucky-based chain has more than 600 locations around the world. The JBLM location is the third Texas Roadhouse on a military base. The first was opened on Fort Bliss, and there’s another on Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea.
While most of the guests are soldiers and airmen, almost all of the employees at Texas Roadhouse are spouses and dependents of JBLM service members.
This story was originally published March 2, 2021 at 5:05 AM.
