How a joint venture with NFL great Ray Lewis failed

The UpTake: Joe Maluff thought he had a sure-fire hit on his hands when he teamed with Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis to open a restaurant in Baltimore. But the Birmingham restaurateur soon found out that distance can be a killer when it comes to business.

Joe Maluff always wanted to make a living in the restaurant business.

His father, grandfather and uncles were all in the food service industry, and to this day, Maluff cannot think of a negative thing to say about running a restaurant.

He and his brother David have owned Full Moon BBQ for 17 years, purchasing the original location on 25th Street South in Birmingham from Pat James in 1997.

For more news from the Birmingham Business Journal, check out Bryan Davis' work.

The two brothers will open their 10th restaurant in Dothan, Alabama, this year. The business is growing at a preferred slow and steady pace.

We recently spoke with Maluff about the company's growth, its future and their previous business venture with former NFL star Ray Lewis, among other things.
The following is an excerpt. For the full article, go to the Birmingham Business Journal:

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in business?
We learned the hard way. We tried to open up a business out of state, and we didn’t have an owner-operator like we do now...When we tried to go off and do one, we tried to run everything from here and get on a plane at seven in the morning, head out, and come home that evening ...We did a really good business, and then all of the sudden we started having theft and lawsuits. We learned our lesson fast.

What made you want to open an out-of-state Full Moon?
We were with Ray Lewis, the linebacker in Baltimore. We used to go down there and do his birthday party every year. He decided, with some local investors, that he wanted to open up a Ray Lewis' Full Moon Bar-B-Que. It was state of the art. It had his Super Bowl trophies, his jerseys and all of his memorabilia...Our concept was to do something like this, and somehow it wound up being like a Taj Mahal. It had 275 seats, a TV at every station.

Would you do business with Ray Lewis again?
Absolutely. He's phenomenal and still is to this day. He is a fantastic human being.