Janis FontaineBud’s grandchildren begin to shape the family company’s future with the first new location in nearly 25 years.
When Bud’s Chicken & Seafood opened a new store in West Boynton Beach this week, it built on a milestone for the family-owned business.
On Dec. 31, Bud Brinkman’s sons completed a 10-year process to hand control of Bud’s to a third generation. The Boynton Beach-based restaurant business has 250 employees and is nearly 70 years old.
Brothers Chris, Nick, Phillip and Luke Brinkman took over Bud’s six Palm Beach County restaurants. The new, seventh location is their first major venture.
Bud’s has thrived by sticking to original family recipes and many of its same suppliers. The quick-service restaurants are known for their Southern-fried chicken and cooked-to-order, wild-caught Alaskan cod.
Bud’s Chicken at the beginning
In the mid-1950s, Alphonse Phillip “Bud” and Dorothy “Pat” Brinkman packed up their five kids in the family station wagon and left Minnesota for sunny South Florida.
The family eventually settled in Boynton Beach. Armed with experience running a tavern up north, Bud and Pat opened the first Bud’s Chicken. It was a tiny takeout place on Federal Highway that sold a chicken dinner with sides for 99 cents.
Bud and Pat raised their eight children, Michelle, Michael, the twins Janice and Judith, Denell, Thomas, Mark and Timothy, on hard work and fried chicken.
The restaurant, with its consistent food and budget prices, caught on, but the family and the business suffered a devastating setback when Bud died of pancreatic cancer. It was 1968. Bud was 47.
Suddenly, Pat had to support eight kids between 7 and 17. With her son Michael’s help, she kept the business in the black.
In 1984, Pat Brinkman transferred ownership to her four sons, Mark, Mike, Tim and Tom, who conceived a robust plan for expansion. The brothers would modernize all the Bud’s locations into a single brand with a familiar building, drive-throughs, and dining rooms in every store. It was a massive undertaking.
The first reimagined store was built on Okeechobee Boulevard and Military Trail in West Palm Beach, and the upgrades continued through 1990. Some stores were relocated and others rebuilt, but every store got a little TLC. Finally, the brothers were satisfied that Bud’s Chicken & Seafood restaurant buildings were as consistent as the food.
After the expansion, the company spent the next 10 years perfecting the business. In 2002, they opened a new store in Royal Palm Beach. But that was the last time Bud’s grew, until now.
Around 2015, the brothers looked around and asked, “What is the future of Bud’s?”
The four Brinkmans were approaching retirement age. They wondered if someone in the family wanted to step up to run the business. Maybe they should sell it.
The idea of selling to a cost-cutting private equity group had little appeal. If they did that, Mark mused, “in a week, they’d be selling pollock instead of cod.”
Then Tom’s four sons raised their hands.
A new generation takes charge
The brothers had all been to college: Chris, 38, and Nick, 37, went to the University of Florida, and Phillip. 36, is a Florida Atlantic University alumnus; Luke, the youngest at 27, studied at Florida Gulf Coast University.
The three older brothers had held jobs outside the restaurant arena. Chris was a relationship manager at Wells Fargo Bank; Nick coached high school football and did golf course maintenance in the off-season. Phillip specialized in the golf club and beach club service field while coaching football.
The four brothers agreed to carry the Brinkman banner into the next quarter century. The family established a timeline for the second generation to retire and the third to step up.
They divided duties based on each brother’s strengths: Chris became the director of finance and maintenance. Nick would focus on community engagement and be the director of HR; Phillip took on marketing and operations; and Luke is in charge of facilities management.
Keeping a sense of humor is important, and they tease each other, as you’d expect. Decisions are handled democratically, they agreed, but Phillip jokes that any real disputes “will be settled out behind the Dumpster.”
“We might need to build an (MMA) octagon in the backyard,” Chris adds with a laugh.
The brothers understand this is more than business; it’s also a family commitment.
The work is not glamorous. You might be an owner, but you might find yourself washing dishes, Phillip said. The Brinkmans have done and say they will do any job they ask an employee to do. There is no room for ego in Bud’s kitchen.
For day-to-day in-store operations, the brothers rely on their team of managers.
“All of our managers are people who started as employees on the front lines,” Phillip said. Big believers in identifying talent and promoting from within, Bud’s has hired managers from the outside, but the family gets great satisfaction from giving opportunities to young people who have the Bud’s stuff.
Melissa Brown has it. She manages the east Boynton store, but she started on the counter.
“I just celebrated 33 years with the company,” she told Stet News by phone. “It was my first job, after school and on the weekends for extra money. I’ve been here ever since.”
A graduate of John I. Leonard High School, Brown started as a cashier, where she learned the menu and how to talk to people. Before long, she was running the drive-through on Friday nights — about as busy as it gets.
After high school, Brown was working two part-time jobs, trying to figure things out, when Bud’s offered her a full-time position. A promotion to assistant manager came six months later.
After that, Brown was a floating manager, and she got to see how the other managers ran their stores. Then she managed the Northlake store, moved to Okeechobee, and finally settled in at the east Boynton store.
It’s Bud’s busiest store, the one tucked under the banyan tree. Several times a day, a train goes by just feet away, drowning out the drive-through, a reminder of the very first store.
First jobs, community friends
Over the years, Bud’s has given thousands of teenagers their first jobs. The staffer who hands you that steaming box of fried chicken may be your neighbor’s kid. “Our employees and our customers come from the local community,” Nick said.
John Johnson, a former employee who is now a regular customer, wrote on Bud’s Facebook page: “Thank you, Tim, for showing me how to properly sweep a floor (a lesson all my children now know as well).”
Brown says mentoring teens comes down to this: “Being understanding, obviously, and being able to talk to the younger generation. These young kids who work here, they keep me young. Even though I keep getting older, they’re still in high school,” she says.
“Being able to lead them on a good path is important. We get to mold them and make some good people from them. Some stay with Bud’s, like me, but most of them go on to do different things.
“They go on to be teachers and police officers, and they become my customers. They say, ‘Hey, Melissa, remember me?’ Now people who had their first job at Bud’s bring their kids here for their first job, too, because they had a good experience.”
“We also like the employees who leave and come back because they realize what a good place Bud’s is to work,” Chris said.
The stores close early by fast food standards, at 9 pm.
“We end at a pretty reasonable time so the kids who have to be at high school the next day, they have enough time to get home and wind down and get to bed and still be able to get up the next morning,” Brown said. “That’s something a lot of places don’t think about.”
There has to be work/life balance even in a family business.
The new west Boynton location is at 8801 W. Boynton Beach Blvd., between Lyons Road and Florida’s Turnpike. Tall palm trees cast shadows on the 3,500-square-foot building, with its gleaming stainless steel and shiny white subway tile.
“It’s a growing area and a great community, and the facility presented the opportunity for a quick turnaround to open. Operationally, it helped us to remain close to our home base and still serve a new market,” Phillip said.
Bud’s trademark: Consistent quality
The cost – they won’t say how much it costs to open a new store — and the stakes are high.
But so are Bud’s standards. The chicken is fresh and free of antibiotics and hormones. It is never frozen. The chicken fingers in the popular “quickie” are halal-certified chicken breast tenderloins, not chopped or pressed meat.
This is food prepared quickly, but it’s not fast food that’s cranked out in advance.
“If you order a fish sandwich,” Phillip said, “they’re dropping the fish when you order it and building that sandwich from scratch.”
Bud’s relationships with its suppliers are equally important in bringing consistency to the food. With napkin-thin margins, there’s always a temptation to save money by buying cheaper product. “We could buy twice-frozen cod from China,” Mark said. It costs half the money.
One of Bud’s longest relationships is with Riviera Beach-based Cheney Brothers food distributor. The tangy tartar sauce and secret recipe cocktail sauce customers come back for? Those are family recipes perfected over time and made with fresh ingredients in Bud’s commissary kitchen in Boynton Beach.
The team takes pride that the food you get looks and tastes the same whether you get it in Royal Palm, West Palm or North Palm.
Community commitment
Nick, whose focus is community engagement, and Phillip, the marketing guy, are looking for new ways to use social media and advertising to stay connected to the community.
In December, Bud’s supported Feeding South Florida. “Our South Florida community means everything to us, and we’re grateful for every opportunity to give back and serve beyond the kitchen,” Chris said.
Stores sponsor Little League teams, and schools are invited to host Spirit Nights, where 40% of sales go back to the school. “It brings people in to try the food and shows them who we are,” he said.
Bud’s Chicken & Seafood is about real people, like their popular “Bud of the Week” social media feature, which posts photos of regular customers. Bud’s also uses customers in their commercials, giving the spots a down-home feel that complements the food.
“Our motto is to do right by people,” Phillip said. “To our family, that means treat your employees, customers and vendors with respect. Never compromise on the quality or taste of your product. Give back when you are able.”
BUD’S CHICKEN & SEAFOOD LOCATIONS
1. Boynton Beach – East
509 E. Boynton Beach Blvd.
Boynton Beach
561-732-3618
2. Greenacres
4790 Lake Worth Road
Greenacres
561-968-5511
3. West Palm Beach – Dixie Highway
7912 S. Dixie Highway
West Palm Beach
561-588-8595
4. West Palm Beach – Okeechobee
4661 Okeechobee Blvd.
West Palm Beach
561-478-0044
5. Royal Palm Beach
11705 Okeechobee Blvd.
Royal Palm Beach
561-798-9292
6. North Palm Beach
2579 Northlake Blvd.
North Palm Beach
561-848-7500
7. Boynton Beach – West
8801 Boynton Beach Blvd.
Boynton Beach
