By Gini McKain

Henderson — Fat Daddy’s Pizza is celebrating its first anniversary.

In May of 2007, Mack and Adrienne Bailey opened Fat Daddy’s at Bayou Belle Truck Stop and Casino at the Henderson exit on Interstate 10.

It has been a bumpy put exhilarating year, says Adrienne.

“Starting a new business in a small community requires a lot of good word-of-mouth advertising,” she says. “We’ve made mistakes, but then I guess everyone does when they start out. We’ve had some bad days but we’ve been lucky enough overall to have wonderful responses from our customers.”

According to the Baileys, their formula for success mixes Acadian flavors with a fun, family-friendly atmosphere.

“People look for three things when eating out: great food, a fair price, and good service,” says Mack. “We know what we like when we go out to eat. That’s what we want to provide — and to do it as well as it can be done. We want people to enjoy our food and to enjoy bringing their families and friends to Fat Daddy’s.”

“We buy the finest ingredients, spin it all with a Cajun flair and present an excellent selection of menu items to please everyone,” Adrienne says. “Our menu never stays the same. We are constantly changing and improving our selections.”

In addition to pizza and calzones (folded over pizza crust with toppings baked inside), Fat Daddy’s serves a variety of sandwiches, salads, pasta, appetizers, hot wings, and seasonal selections.

According to Adrienne, Fat Daddy’s welcomes customers’ comments and suggestions.

“We are here to please them,” she says. “Anything we can do to make our customers’ experience better, that’s what we want. And we want it to be a good family experience too. We want to be the place you take the team after the game or take your mom and dad after church.”

The pair take pretty much the same view on employer-employee relationships, too.

“One of our primary goals has been to work with young people,” says Adrienne. “We hope that we can teach some work ethics and business knowledge to help them in future pursuits.

“Not only do we want to play a supportive role for the kids, schools, and youth groups, we hope we have had and will continue to have a positive economic impact on the community.”

Their attitude as business owners has make all the difference, she says.

“If anything has made us successful, it’s our enthusiasm. We were all tremendously excited about opening the restaurant. Even after a year of operation, we are still constantly having new ideas. We can’t do everything we want to do at once. But we look at this as just another beginning. We hope that Fat Daddy’s will keep growing and get even better through the next year.”