There Are a Lot of Chicken Places. There Is Only One Chicken Man.

A Marine veteran spent twelve years turning a Garden Oaks chicken restaurant into a community institution. Then H-E-B bought the lot. What happens next is up to all of us.

Forged in Business — A Veteran Entrepreneur Spotlight Series | Issue 02

If you live anywhere near Garden Oaks, you already know the Chicken Man.

Maybe he fed your family during Covid, when he was matching every family meal sold and running twenty volunteer drivers a day — more than a hundred families fed daily. Maybe he fed your kid’s teachers. Maybe he showed up after the freeze, or the hurricane, or the day your VFW needed a hand. For twelve years, Naro Mak and his Hartz Chicken on Pinemont Drive have been the place Garden Oaks turns to when it needs somebody to show up. The restaurant is at 1215 Pinemont Dr, Houston, TX 77018.

Here is what you might not know. H-E-B purchased the lot his restaurant sits on. Everyone told him he was dead in the water. Find placements for your staff. Be out by the hard date.

Then H-E-B did something worth naming. They pumped the brakes. They let him stay and keep operating month to month while they figure out the development. Not one member of his staff left. He has hired two more since.

I am just going to do me, and I am blessed for the next day.

H-E-B built its reputation on community. Naro built his life on it. We think those two stories belong in the same parking lot, and if you agree, share this one. Let them hear it from Houston.

Who Is the Chicken Man?

Naro came to this country at three years old, his family escaping the Killing Fields of Cambodia with nothing. No English, no money, no network. They picked cucumbers and tomatoes in the fields of California until a decade of scraping bought his father a donut shop, and the family system took it from there. One business lifts the next. Nobody gets left behind.

At seventeen he joined the Marine Corps. Infantry. He was not even a citizen yet. You do not have to be, and most people have no idea. He earned his citizenship while wearing the uniform. His brother served in the Navy, cousins in the Army and Air Force. One refugee family, four branches. As he puts it, we are about as American as they come.

How he got from there to the most beloved chicken restaurant in Garden Oaks is the episode. What we can tell you is the three things he said that we have not stopped thinking about since.

From the Episode | 01 — His Biggest Bottleneck Was Himself

It took Naro seven years to learn how to delegate. Seven years of taking every meeting inside the restaurant with one eye on the drive-through, believing nobody could do it like he did. He was right, and it did not matter. In the episode he breaks down the moment that forced his hand, and what it cost him to keep being the cog in his own machine.

From the Episode | 02 — You Are Going to Have Horrible Days. Passion Is What Locks You In.

There is a Tuesday morning story in this episode involving a collapsed ceiling tile, a dead fryer, a warm freezer, and a staff call-out, all before 8 a.m., that every business owner needs to hear him tell. His point is not that it gets easier. His point is that passion is the only thing that gets you back in the truck, and if you do not have it, no system will save you.

From the Episode | 03 — The Product Was Never the Business. It Was Always Him.

People think I sell fried chicken, he told us. I do. But that is the ship. There are a lot of chicken places. There is only one Chicken Man. In the episode he explains how he figured out that he was the business, and what that unlocked for everything else.

Hear the Full Conversation

Watch Meet Houston’s Chicken Man on YouTube, or play the episode here.

The Part We Cannot Stop Thinking About

He also gave up what he called the family secret, the internal financing system that took his family from farm rows to restaurant ownership in one generation without a single bank, and made the case for why the veteran community should be running the same play. That conversation alone is worth the listen.

A kid from Cambodia raised his right hand for this country before it was fully his on paper. Twenty-some years later, he is the reason a hundred families ate during a pandemic and the reason a Garden Oaks parking lot means something to the people who live around it.

Share this story. Tag somebody who knows the Chicken Man. And if you are H-E-B, you already know where to find him: Hartz Chicken on Pinemont, 1215 Pinemont Dr, Houston, TX 77018.

Forged in Business is a veteran entrepreneur spotlight series inside Building With The Browers, a podcast for veteran entrepreneurs and couples building businesses together, published in partnership with Dock Line Magazine. Read Issue 01 with Navy veteran Jesse Mahan, and listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Levi and Breanna are also part of the team behind the Veterans Outdoor Recreation Summit, October 1 through 3 in Deer Valley, Utah.