Wes Denney, owner of Brown Dog Deli, is a TikTok star, but he has a confession to make: He’s not really all that into TikTok.
Fortunately for him, his daughter Hailey is, and when she coaxed him into goofing around on camera, he figured it would be a good daddy-daughter bonding time. Little did he know that one of the videos would leap to 5 million views and his business would expand as a result.
“The idea was something for us to do and something for the staff to do,” Denney said. “After hours, we would get together, we’d get a small group and do TikToks. I had heard of it, but I couldn’t spell it. I didn’t have the app, and I refused to watch them. My daughter was in charge, and it was very small scale. I think it was like, ‘Let’s get revenge on dad and make him look stupid on TikTok!’”
The idea, which started about two years ago, grew with the audience, and Hailey engaged the dancing talents of one of the employees, who happened to be head of the Charleston Cougarettes at the College of Charleston, Madi Lynch.
The first videos were only modestly popular. “One day, we made a video where my daughter and the others would run from the house and run into Brown Dog and run to the counter and pretend to order, then run to the seat and drink a little chai latte. My daughter and I went out to eat that night, and it was like, ‘Release the Kracken!’ Lo and behold, we’re moving from 600 likes or hits or whatever you call them, to 6,000, and then to 38,000. My daughter is freaking out because this is her dream, and I’m excited because she’s excited. It was neat watching it,” he said.
Lights, camera, closet full of props
At that point, he said, he thought maybe it was time to put a little more effort into the videos, and they became more choreographed. The dancers would lip-sync to corny vintage songs, with Denney always hamming it up in the background. He now has a closet of props for the videos and a waiting list of people wanting to be in the videos with him. Even more important, he has a waiting list of about 20 to 30 people who want to work at the deli, a rarity in these short-staffed times.
Denney said the first day after the video reached 5 million views, “I would say that literally, the next day, we had our first lines out the door, and we haven’t skipped a beat since. We’ve gotten busier over time. I’ve had to extend my kitchen, double my staff and change my menu to take off some of the more time-consuming things because it became too hard to get ready.”
That kind of growth is rare, and TikTok took notice of that lightning-in-a-bottle moment to create a small business page that featured Brown Dog Deli.
“I had to do a terrible rap song for the web page — I mean, it was supposed to be terrible — and, at some point, they awarded me with five billboards, three in Charleston. It took six hours to get one good picture of me for that!”
Hailey is a junior at the University of Georgia, and Denney hopes to hand the business over to her some day. For that reason, he won’t do anything too over-the-top, even if it would garner more TikTok viewers.
“I didn’t want too much profanity or racy stuff,” he said. “I wanted the videos to be safe, fun and family-oriented because my face and my business are attached to them.”
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