I've covered sports for more than half of my life now. As of April, I will have been on the Waco restaurant beat for four years.
Usually the Venn Diagram of those two things is completely separate. But, over the weekend, there was some overlap. If you read this blog normally and stay appraised of what's shaking in Waco, you probably already know where I'm going with this. A photo surfaced of a sign that said, and I'm paraphrasing here, restaurants like Pappadeaux, Pappasito's, In-N-Out, Uncle Mario's, Potbelly and the Whole Foods grocery store are coming to Waco.
So some folks turned to us for more details. We're pumped that people think about us when stuff like this comes up. That's kind of our goal.
However, we don't have the kind of details that I think people wanted. I think folks wanted us to say "Yeah, that's completely, 100-percent happening."
I was at Baylor covering hoops on Saturday when I initially saw the photo. I looked at it and noticed it was apparently taken inside the Baylor football indoor practice facility. That led me to the assumption that it was part of Baylor football recruiting. For those of you who don't follow football recruiting as closely as some of us, tomorrow is national signing day, i.e. Christmas for college football junkies.
Sure enough, word came out that the sign was posted at Junior Day at Baylor. It shows how well the Bears are doing these days that on this pivotal weekend of recruiting, they were already working on next season. It's going to be a banner signing day for Baylor tomorrow.
Anyway, the "Coming soon to Waco" sign was part of an effort to promote the city to potential football-playing citizens. It's not that there wasn't validity to the claim, but it's more like the type of thing you would say on a first date to woo a potential romantic interest.
Having said that, Potbelly is headed to the shopping center across Valley Mills from H-E-B. We have reason to believe In-N-Out and a new pizza place, possibly called Uncle Mario's, will be landing at the new shopping center at Valley Mills and Lake Air.
On Monday, the social media universe, oddly sparked by the Waco Police Department's Twitter and Facebook, gave us the news that Pappadeaux and Pappasito's don't have plans in motion to come to Waco. Of course, that was the big eye-catcher of the whole deal. There's always the chance that the folks in the know at Baylor football have heard whispers that it could happen, but as far as being official, it's not.
And Whole Foods is creating a lot of Waco smoke, as in, "where there's smoke, there's fire." We're keeping an ear out for more details, which we will absolutely share as soon as we have them.
That's all I know for now.
