THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 21, 1996 TAG: 9603190068
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Restaurant review
SOURCE: SAM MARTINETTE
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
In Hampton Roads, the name Pollard is nearly synonymous with chicken, and there's a good reason for that.
In fact, there are 50 million reasons, because that's the number of pieces of fried chicken Johnny Pollard estimates his family has served since Elizabeth ``Betty'' Pollard talked her sons into going into the food business instead of opening a gas station.
The first Pollard's Chicken opened in 1967 on East Little Creek Road with one full-time employee. Today the family operates five stores and has 130 employees during the peak catering season. Betty Pollard got her start cooking for church functions back in the 1950s. That led to catering jobs, and it was quite natural to put the kids to work. Johnny Pollard recalls when the family could put the entire catering operation in the back of a station wagon.
``My brother (Robert) and myself were working for the railroad, but we wanted to have a service station,'' he said. ``We were fairly mechanically inclined and liked to tinker with cars. Mom wanted to build up her catering business and acquire some commercial friers.''
It pays to listen to Mom. The family bought the Chicken Ranch on the site of the old Wilder's Drive-In theater, added their name and dropped the price of the best selling item from 90 cents to 70 and never looked back. Johnny Pollard, now the president of Pollard's Chicken & Catering, was the first of the family to go to work full time for the business, but he soon was followed by his dad and brother, then his sisters. Before passing away last year, Betty Pollard saw her dream turn into a business that supported her entire family.
There are two Pollard's Chicken locations in Norfolk - one on the corner of Ballentine and Chesapeake boulevards (855-7864) and another at 326 Bayview Boulevard (587-8185) - as well as two in Virginia Beach and a fifth store in Great Bridge. In addition to fried chicken, Pollard's offers seafood, barbecue and a selection of a dozen or so ``Southern-style'' vegetables, including a whole baked sweet potato and mixed greens. The hours of operation are generally 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. but may vary slightly from location to location.
You can get chicken by the piece ($1.99 for a breast/69 cents for a wing), as a dinner (two pieces, two vegetables and a puff - $3.79) and by the load (eight pieces for $6.99/30 pieces for $24.90), and if you really want a lot of chicken you can get 100 pieces for $70. Other menu items include a barbecued rib dinner ($5.49), a minced pork barbecue dinner ($3.79), a basket of fried shrimp with fries ($3.99) and the new chicken-fried steak $5.29).
The catering business that led to the retail operation is still going strong.
``December is our best month of the year,'' Johnny Pollard said. ``We do thousands of trays during the holiday season. We have two shifts, working day and night to make up orders.''
Catering has taken a crew from Pollard's to the Bahamas to do a party, and on the road to the Carolinas, Richmond and Baltimore. The largest function Pollard could recall was feeding 5,500 people during the commissioning of the aircraft carrier Eisenhower, but Pollard's regularly feeds thousands at a time during company picnics.
One longtime client is the Norfolk City Council, which has been buying fried chicken every Tuesday for more than 20 years, Pollard said.
For information on catering, call 463-2530.
Robert Pollard is no longer active in the business, according to his brother John.
``He is hoping to go to Russia as a missionary,'' Pollard said. ``My younger sisters Betty Ann and Peggy are both involved.'' I asked Pollard how he accounted for the family's success.
``We offer people more selections than most fast-food places,'' he explained. ``And all of our products have always been fresh. We use pure vegetable oil to fry - we never have used animal fat - and even the flour we use is made specifically for our breading. And we marinate our chicken so that even if you take the skin off you'll still get the same taste when you bite into it.
``And we feel blessed with the number of loyal customers we've had over the years. We don't have the funds to advertise like the big chains, yet we've been able to hold our own.'' by CNB