Why four restaurants are racing, and what the shirts are for

My working life has gone in a circle. Restaurants first, starting in high school. Then flying. Someday I want to close the loop and run a restaurant again, and I have four ideas I can't stop thinking about.

Catch & Not Release is a dockside crab shack on the water, somewhere warm enough to stay open year-round. Captain's Wings is wings, fried twice, just off the field, and its logo is a yellow Cub with chicken wings for wings. Smoking Hole BBQ is barbecue out of a hangar. Pilots will understand the name. The Flying & Dining Cafe is the airport restaurant I always wanted to find: three meals on the field, with a homemade biscuit menu I'm calling the Biscuit Inquisition. For now they all share a made-up home, Ward Field (KJWB), named for my grandfather. Where each one really lands is part of what the Race decides.

I can only open one at a time, so I turned it into a race. Each restaurant has its own merch, and every order adds one Founding Crew member to that team. A hat counts the same as a hoodie. The restaurant with the most crew is the one I try to open first, and it takes the pot.

The money works like this. The profit from each restaurant's merch goes into that restaurant's fund, and every fund has a public ledger so you can see every dollar in and out. If a restaurant hasn't opened within eight years of its first dollar, its fund either rolls into the leader or goes to an organization that gives culinary school scholarships. If none of them open, it all goes to the scholarships.

I want to be plain about what this is and isn't. Buying a shirt isn't an investment or a donation. You get the shirt, and the restaurant's fund gets the profit. Nothing is guaranteed but my word, and I'm giving it. My guess is that any one of these has about a coin-flip chance, and I'm going to try anyway. This will take five years or more.

The designs are going to be a little ridiculous, on purpose. A Cub with chicken wings for wings. A smoking hole with a brisket in it. A crab that refuses to be released. I want them to be the kind of shirt a stranger stops you about at the fuel pump.

You know how people still wear shirts from the fried chicken place on Breaking Bad, a restaurant that only ever existed on TV? That's the feeling I'm after. Wear one, and you're wearing a restaurant that doesn't exist yet. Enough of them, and one of these will.

Pick a team on the Race page, see who's leading, and check the ledger whenever you like. If you have an idea for a design, send it to me. The weirder the better.

Thank you for being part of it. I will see you at the table.