Restaurant owners unsettled about open carry in Texas

AUSTIN – Whataburger shot into the headlines, not for patty melts and pancake breakfasts, but for a CEO who stands adamant that his restaurants won’t serve openly armed customers even when Texas allows open-carry come January.

Even if other restaurateurs get jitters from packing patrons, they’re not yet saying whether they’ll take similar steps.

“Whataburger was one of the first, but all businesses are going to have to be looking at it,” said Wendy Woodland, a Texas Restaurant Association spokeswoman. “No one else has come out.”

The San Antonio-based Whataburger issued a statement by CEO Preston Atkinson in early July, prompted by the new law that will take effect next year and make Texas one of more than 40 states that recognize some form of open carry.

“Whataburger supports customers’ Second Amendment rights,” Atkinson said in the statement, “but we haven’t allowed the open carry of firearms in our restaurants for a long time (although we have not prohibited licensed conceal carry.)”

He continued: “We’ve had many customers and employees tell us they’re uncomfortable being around someone with a visible firearm who is not a member of law enforcement, and as a business, we have to listen and value that feedback in the same way we value yours. We have a responsibility to make sure everyone who walks into our restaurants feels comfortable.”

Johnnie Jordan, owner of Morris Neal’s Handy Hamburgers in Cleburne, south of Fort Worth, sympathizes with Atkinson’s views.

But Jordan is undecided about what to do, if anything, about the law.

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable with it,” Jordan said. “I’m going to have to think on it.”

Kay Greenlee, an owner at Dutch’s Legendary Hamburgers opposite the Texas Christian University campus in Fort Worth, said that while the prospect of visibly armed civilians makes her nervous, she’s planning a partners’ meeting to decide whether to do anything about it.

“We probably won’t have restrictions,” Grenlee said. “Running a business and running a home are different.”

But Jason Chung, who manages the Burger House in Bryan, said he and his uncle, the owner, have already formulated a policy: No open carry for customers.

“Carrying the guns around, that doesn’t seem right to me,” Chung said. “I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

Several national restaurants and retailers – such as Jack in the Box and Starbucks – have asked customers to leave their weapons at home.

And in states that allow open carry, such as Oklahoma, it’s become a non-issue, said Jim Hopper, president and CEO of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association.

Three years ago, when Oklahoma approved open carry, the law created a headline frenzy, Hopper said. Restaurateurs there, like those in Texas, could decide whether to serve customers who were packing.

“A restaurant owner knows his customers better than anybody else,” said Hopper, whose group represents 4,000 restauranteurs. “Our advice was, do whatever you feel is best.”

Since then, Hopper, who frequents restaurants in his state, said he’s only seen another customer openly carry a handgun once.

Stephen Barth, an expert in hospitality law at the University of Houston, noted that many other states already have open carry, which he described as “just a step further than concealed carry.”

Once the law is in effect, he said, deciding to ban guns in a business comes down to a cost-benefit analysis.

David Moseley, a Dallas attorney who represents hotels and restaurateurs, said his clients are giving “mixed feedback.”

“Some people are going to ban openly carried weapons, not concealed. That’s a perception issue,” he said.

Moseley said may people probably will start carrying guns once January arrives. “It’s like forbidden fruit,” he said.

But that should change within a year, he said.

Moseley said people’s reaction to seeing guns openly displayed is cultural. Still to be settled, he said, is an argument now “bubbling around legal circles.”

The gist of that question – at the heart of civil suits arising from the 2012 theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., in which a dozen people were killed – is whether a business owner who posts a sign forbidding guns assumes responsibility for patrons’ safety.

Moseley doesn’t seem to put much stock in that question, however. The problem is the crazy guy with the gun, not the guy showing the movie, he said.