Today's special: The restaurant

The owners of Key Western Grille in Estero love playing pranks on their staff. They’ve even been known to send new employees to neighboring restaurants to borrow a bucket of steam or light bulb grease.

But when Greg Hughes and Shawn Teeters told their staff a month ago that they plan to give away the restaurant, they weren’t kidding.

“At first I just thought it was another one of their jokes,” said Dustin Angle, a manager who has worked at the Miromar Outlets mall restaurant for two years. “Like the time they sent someone to one of the other restaurants to get light bulb grease — there is no such thing.”

The idea to give away the restaurant was born when Teeters heard about a Key West restaurant owner having an essay contest to give away his business.

“I thought that was a cool idea and it just snowballed from there,” Teeters said. “I decided it would be a fun and exciting thing to do, but I wanted to do it as a TV show.”

So, starting this weekend, they will be accepting applications — at $100 apiece — from people interested in competing in a 10-week reality TV show for a chance to win the restaurant.

It’s not that the business is not profitable, Hughes said. It nets about $150,000 a year.

But they hope to recoup that — and the approximately $200,000 they’ve invested in the place — and even more through advertising and product placement deals. Plus, if they do land a national network to air the show, the publicity will be a good thing. The duo just opened a new Key Western Grille on Bonita Beach Road just west of U.S. 41, and Teeters is also one of the owners of Chee Burger Chee Burger in Naples.

Photo by MICHEL FORTIER, Daily News

All the owners of Key Western Grill need is 7,000 applicants with $100 to have a shot at winning the $150,000-a-year profit from the restaurant by competing in a reality television show. Sixteen applicants will live and work together for a shot at the restaurant at Miromar Outlets.

Teeters admits he hopes to capitalize on the product placement aspect of it, but he said he is also looking forward to the fun of making a reality show, he said.

“From the outside looking in, people don’t see what goes on in a restaurant. It’s quite comic; there’s drama, too,” he said. “The behind-the-scenes of a restaurant makes for a perfect show.”

Applications will be available outside the restaurant starting this weekend. Hughes and Teeters also plan to launch a Web site so prospective contestants can apply via the Internet.

They hope to collect applications through the summer locally as well as in Tampa, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Jacksonville.

The competition will begin once 7,000 applications have been collected. Sixteen of the applicants will be selected to compete on the television show. The chosen contestants will live together and work at the restaurant for 10 weeks. A panel of local judges will help review the applications and narrow the field to 16.

The application fees will be held in escrow until then, Teeters said, and if a total of 7,000 isn’t reached, the fees will be refunded.

Once the competition begins, Hughes said, the idea of the unscripted TV show is to teach the contestants every aspect of running a restaurant.

“They will work in the restaurant, wash dishes, cook, wait tables, bus tables, bartend, everything,” Hughes said. “Each week we will eliminate one, some weeks two.”

They plan to have cooking, serving and bartending competitions. The ultimate goal is to find someone who really wants and deserves to own a successful, profit-making restaurant, Hughes said, even if it’s someone without prior experience.

Key Western Grille is a family-style, 200-seat restaurant on the lakeside at Miromar. The menu ranges from burgers, steaks and seafood to salad and wraps. The average guest check is $10.25, and specialties include coconut lobster, Queen Victoria salad, grilled shrimp club wrap and a fresh grilled veggie sandwich, Hughes said.

The partners say they are negotiating with several networks, but refuse to divulge which ones. According to the entry form, the show — if it becomes reality — is likely to be called “The Entrepreneur.”

How the idea will be received by TV networks and even prospective contestants remains to be seen. For now the two seem to have the support of their staff — even those who were skeptical at first.

“It will be interesting, that’s for sure,” Angle said. “It’s hard to say what will come of it.”

As far as Key Western Grille server Sally Rickert is concerned, it’s bound to be entertaining no matter what happens.

“At first I didn’t believe it. I was like, ‘This is podunk Fort Myers, nothing big really happens here,’ ” Rickert said.

Once she was convinced it was happening, Rickert said, she was ecstatic. She says she’s looking forward to teaching the contestants a thing or two about waiting tables. She is convinced there will be disasters, tripping, falling, mistakes and customer complaints, but that, she said, will be the fun part.

“I have slipped and fallen. I have run the wrong orders and messed up on food runs,” Rickert said. “And I am looking forward to seeing others doing it, instead. That’s going to be entertainment right there.”