[title subtitle=”words: Marla Cantrell
Images: Jeromy Price”][/title]
It’s a fine summer day, warm but not hot. The sky is gray, a slab hanging over the city, and the threat of rain has cooled things down. Not far away, in a parking lot on Rogers Avenue in Fort Smith, Arkansas, Micah Bubbus is watching the changing weather from inside his shiny white food truck. “Patrick’s Butcher Boy Burgers” is emblazoned across the mobile restaurant, and two picnic tables sit beside it, ready for customers.
The truck was Micah’s second idea. His first was to open a brick and mortar restaurant, but he couldn’t quite make it happen. Experience wasn’t the problem: Micah comes from a family of restaurateurs. In fact, it was his cousin, Alan Bubbus, of David’s Butcher Boy Burgers in Conway and Little Rock, who helped him decide a food truck was the way to go. “The city codes here allow me to stay in one place for four months,” Micah says, “which is a big advantage for me. Plus, moving is a great option, and you can take the truck to events, you can do on-site catering, fresh food made right there, nothing made somewhere else and carried in. It just all made sense.”
What follows is a fast moving and at times confusing conversation about Micah’s family, who owns which restaurant, and where those are. He has an uncle David, a man Micah says started working in a butcher shop at the age of eight, and who knows more about beef and how to prepare it than anyone he’s ever met. There’s also an uncle named Richard who’s been in the business for eighteen years. And then there’s another uncle in Russellville who owns CJ’s Butcher Boy Burgers. There are even more uncles in Eldorado and Magnolia who have restaurants. To make matters even more confusing, the Bubbuses like to pass down first names, so David’s line goes something like this: “David’s Butcher Boy Burgers is named for my uncle David Alan Bubbus, and then there’s his son, my cousin Alan Bubbus, and he has a son named David. My grandfather, David’s brother, is Patrick. My middle name is Patrick, and it’s my son’s middle name, and that’s why my truck is Patrick’s Butcher Boy Burgers.”
To simplify things, you need only to look for the unifier, Butcher Boy. That’s how you know you’re buying a meal from Micah or one of his many relatives.
Once the family lineage is worked out, Micah returns to the topic of his food truck. There was a lot to do before he opened for business in November, 2013. The forty foot truck started as a clean slate and Micah had to design the interior. The trick was getting everything he needed into a tight space, and organizing his equipment into zones: prep, cooking, assembly, clean-up, in a way that gets the burger to the customer as quickly as possible.
With the design settled, Micah concentrated on the food. What he serves are burgers and french fries, made on-site, grilled cheese sandwiches, and recently he added a chicken sandwich. He grinds the hamburger meat as needed. It’s never been frozen, which he says is a big plus for flavor, and he cooks the burgers on a griddle as opposed to a grill. He thinks using freshly ground beef, thick cut bacon (for bacon burgers) and the freshest produce is the key to his success. The spices he uses he won’t talk about. “You’ve gotta have some secrets,” he says and then laughs. The result is the kind of burgers your mom used to make, if you had the right kind of mom: juicy, delicious, as close to homemade as you’re going to find. “I have a lot of regulars,” Micah says, “and they’ve followed me from location to location because this food is so good.”
As he’s saying this, two women finish their meals. As they leave, one calls out, “Thank you, Micah. It was delicious, like always!”
Micah beams. He believes there are two things, besides good food, that you need to make it in the food business: hard work and personality. “I really like people, so that’s not a problem to me, and I grew up in the restaurant world, so working twelve hours a day is nothing to me. The kitchen, yeah,” Micah says, “it’s hot, but kitchens are always hot.
“The nicest thing anyone’s said about my food is that it’s heaven on a bun. Someone else said, ‘It’s so much more than a burger.’ That’s great to hear. My parents had restaurants growing up, so I know the business inside and out. I used to nap on the vinyl booths. I worked weekends a lot more than kids who didn’t have parents with a restaurant did, but my cousins were having the same experience. I think it helped me. I started out bussing tables and doing dishes, so I learned from the bottom up.”
Even so, he didn’t intend to end up where he is today. He has a business degree from the U of A, and still does some work in the field of finance. But something kept happening when he was eating out. “I picked places apart. I saw things I thought I could do better. That makes me sound like a food snob but I think it was all the experience I had growing up, knowing as much as I did about the business.”
Today, he estimates he serves 150 burgers a day, and has four part-time employees. He thinks people enjoy the novelty of eating from a food truck. He thinks they love the menu, which includes add-ons to the burgers (such as grilled mushrooms), and customers love his shakes and malts. Kids often order grilled cheese sandwiches, and many of his regulars drop by after a hard day’s work for take-out.
Micah is happy with how well Patrick’s Butcher Boy Burgers is doing. He talks about other cities where the food truck industry is booming, how all kinds of people with a dream and talent in the kitchen are making their way in a world mostly populated with traditional restaurants. And it’s not that he doesn’t want that as well. One day, he hopes to own a restaurant, maybe even more than one. When he eats out, he always chooses local, independent restaurants. “I don’t see the appeal of chain restaurants,” he says. “Eating the same food you could get in any other city. I like to eat good food from local people, who are trying to make it here, who are our neighbors.”
As he’s talking, another customer pulls up. He stands at the window, rubbing his chin, surveying the menu. Micah greets him warmly, and the two start talking. Micah is making another friend, another customer, one who might become a regular. Micah turns back to the griddle, and the hamburger patty begins to sizzle. The traffic on Rogers Avenue zips by, tires sounding across pavement, and finally the rain begins. But still the customer waits, eager for his order, ready to try one of Micah’s burgers for the very first time.
Patrick’s Butcher Boy Burgers is currently set up in front of Woodlands Church, next to Ashley Furniture Home Store, at 7800 Rogers Avenue in Fort Smith. For updates, find them on Facebook.
