What's Cooking Two brothers give customers a great environment to relax and just hang out in.

Richie Cunningham had one; so did Jack Tripper. One of the mostpopular elements in TV history has been the "hangout."Much like that classic haunt, Cheers, the idea for Hard TimesCafé was to create a place where everybody knows yourname.

A former graphic designer, Fred Parker never had a place to hangout . . . so he created his own. In 1980, with no background in therestaurant business, he and his brother Jim became co-founders ofthe Hard Times Café by matching their family's chili withsome good beer and country music. The result was a bonafide hit."It became incredibly popular," says Fred. "We'dhave lines around the block. It was so successful we had to buildothers."

Fred, now 58, and Jim, 54, saw an opportunity to expand theircreation in 1997, when Dan Rowe, franchisor of the Chesapeake BagelBakery, stumbled into the restaurant as a customer. "They makesure the concept doesn't evolve too far from what made it sopopular," says Rowe, now CEO of the Alexandria, Virginia-basedfranchise.