After beginning a career in finance and banking, David “Alan” Bubbus, 33, did something he swore he’d never do. He opened a restaurant.
Having grown up watching his father open everything from burger joints (CJ’s Butcher Boy Burgers) to fried chicken restaurants (Chicken Country) to Mexican (El Matador), he knew just how much work it takes to run a restaurant. “The restaurant business is so deceiving,” Bubbus says, “because everybody cooks in their kitchen at home, and everybody has a little experience serving, so it’s [easy] to think, ‘Well, I can do this.’”
But when he ran across some real estate in Conway that would be perfect for a restaurant, Bubbus and his wife made the leap of faith to the burger business. They opened the first David’s Burgers in Conway in 2010 and have opened additional locations every year since — in west Little Rock, North Little Rock and Park Plaza Mall — and now, even have a food truck.
Q: David’s Burgers has grown at an unusually fast rate for a restaurant. Did you expect that much growth so soon?
A: My first job out of college was with a recruiting company called Maxim Healthcare. They’re a very promote-from-within, driven company. As a matter of fact, their corporate structure, we’ve kind of borrowed a lot of their concepts. You know, where the best person on staff gets the promotion and gets to open another store. That kind of mentality. And it creates a level of competition. People come to work, and they’re excited to be there. They wanna win. We’ve got a lot of very driven individuals that work in our company that wanna rise to the top, and they kinda get to sit next and work next to the guy they’re competing with. That part’s a lot of fun. So, I guess what I’m getting at is that corporate background that I had really made me want to grow the company. I never wanted to have just a one-store type of situation. [Maxim] to me was one of the best companies I worked for because of the competitive style within the company.
Q: You’ve said you never thought you’d want to be in the restaurant business. Do you have to admit the desire to start a restaurant was always somewhere in the back of your mind?
A: I think for me it was an opportunity to lead. It was an opportunity to take a little bit from each of these companies I’d worked for and take a few of the things I didn’t like, and I really wanted to build a company culture. I wanted to have the opportunity to have a business that could impact people for something good, to be better individuals. And I know it sounds kind of silly, but if you come into business and you wanna do right, you wanna provide a good-quality product for your customers, you want your staff to enjoy working, to have a lot of fun in the business … I feel blessed to come to work. What we do is what you do with your friends. When you have friends over to your house, what do you do? You feed ’em. “Come on in! Good to see ya. Have a seat, what can I get you to drink?” We want to bring that same kind of culture to the restaurant. We want to treat our customers like our buddies, coming to our house.
Q: What are some of the challenges involved in working with family?
A: The good thing about working with my father is he’s just fully committed. And that’s never been an issue. This is just what he enjoys doing. This is his golf. If he were to want to do something for fun, this is it. I think we work well as a team. I think it’s challenging, especially in the beginning. The first year was very hard. ... He got real mad at me one day, and he said, “Alan, you don’t even know what you don’t know.” And I didn’t realize that at the time, but he was right. He’s forgotten more than I know. Point being, I came in and I was successful in this corporate career, and I kind of felt like I had value, too. My wife and I are the owners of this whole thing, and it’s been kind of awkward at times cause dad’s the boss and my wife and I are the owners. But I’ve kind of yielded that to him because I respect him.
Q: It seems like your business background probably helped you a lot in opening this business. What was your experience in the restaurant industry before opening David’s?
A: I grew up being a dishwasher. Dad always made me do the jobs no one else wanted to do. So I was always washing dishes and scrubbing the floors, so that’s just where I grew up, and I always swore I’d never do it, because it is a lot of work. And I came into it thinking, you know I think, with Food Network and all, food is somewhat sexy. You know, it’s got that appeal to it and that desire. But at the same time, if you can imagine at the end of a long day what you do at home when you wash dishes and you put them in the washing machine and then you get those pots and start scrubbing them, that’s what the restaurant business is. Cause at the end of the day, everything’s got to be clean.