The Mockingbird Diner closed, operator Jack Perkins says.
The restaurant opened a year and a half ago near the entrance to Dallas Love Field airport. It served breakfast, lunch and dinner. Perkins names a single reason the restaurant closed: staffing.
"We had between 40 and 50 employees," Perkins says, "and we'd lose 10 or 12 people a month."
It isn't Perkins' only restaurant: He started Slow Bone barbecue joint (and then sold it) and currently owns Maple and Motor burger joint, a restaurant we named on our list of 15 essential burger joints in North Texas. Perkins says The Mockingbird Diner faced challenges his other restaurants never did.
"This whole process has befuddled me," he says. "We have never had trouble staffing Maple & Motor. ... The people who I hired at Slow Bone are still there. ... For the first time ever, I'm at a complete loss for why this didn't work."
In March, Perkins and his team closed the restaurant temporarily and turned it into a cafeteria-style place, more like a local Luby's. The menu remained southern, with the option for "meat and three" with sides like mac and cheese and green beans. The change meant Perkins needed 30% fewer employees, and he hoped it would fix the diner's trouble keeping employees.
Now that it's over, Perkins admits, "It was a hail Mary."
The restaurant closed after dinner service on Friday, May 31.
Perkins knows he could have done things differently. "I made a mistake: We shouldn't have opened for breakfast. I made a mistake: We shouldn't have been this big. We probably staffed the restaurant wrong from the beginning," he says.
Despite his challenges finding what he calls reliable restaurant staff — which other Dallas restaurateurs have struggled with, too — Perkins says he'll open another restaurant someday.
"We're not done," he says.
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