Burger Boys is ‘homemade taste at a fast-food pace’
Andre Bryant has made every single hamburger he’s sold out of his Burger Boys restaurant in South Knoxville.
Calvin Mattheis, Knoxville News Sentinel
- Burger Boys closes May 7 to make way for a stoplight entrance for Kern’s Food Hall.
- Kern’s Food Hall developer Alex Dominguez offered Burger Boys owner Andre Bryant a spot inside the venue but was turned down.
- Burger Boys might reopen at a different location, according to a May 4 Facebook post.
Alex Dominguez is the Atlanta-based developer behind Kern’s Food Hall who has decades of experience growing companies like Chick-fil-A. Andre Bryant is the owner and founder of a local one-man burger drive-thru on Chapman Highway.
It’s the most unlikely of friendships, but the South Knoxville food hall is what brought the two together, even though it’s the food hall that will ultimately lead Bryant to close his adjacent Burger Boys drive-thru May 7.
“He has never let me pay for a burger,” Dominguez said. “That guy has my back. I’m a developer over here doing whatever, and you’ve got this little guy, and he’s got my back. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Bryant opened Burger Boys in 2017 and continued to cook, clean, serve and market the restaurant by himself. The restaurant has no inside area for customers and is only a few hundred square feet, but the property has potential to control traffic flow in and out of Kern’s, Dominguez said.
Burger Boys is at the intersection of Chapman Highway and Fort Avenue. If you are driving south on Chapman Highway and turn left at this light (just past the existing Kern’s entrance), it takes you directly onto the Burger Boys property.
Bryant was locked into a lease on the property until 2027 but has agreed to let go of his claim on the property for the sake of the food hall.
“After meeting with Alex Dominguez and the development team I decided to grant access allowing them to safely enter the Kern’s location,” Bryant said May 4 in a Facebook post announcing the closure. “This was a business decision on my part and there was no pressure applied to me to do so. I decided to donate the building and equipment as well. It was a perfect opportunity for me at this point in my life to move on.”
About the Burger Boys stoplight on Chapman Highway desired by Kern’s
Redesigning that intersection as a potential entrance to Kern’s means customers wouldn’t need to turn left in front of oncoming traffic without the protection of a light. It also means there will be a safer way to get to the other side of Chapman Highway without going through steep intersections like Hawthorne Avenue or going under the railroad tracks on West Blount Avenue.
Dominguez has been working with the city on redesigning the intersection for more than two years and officially approached Bryant about the idea in 2020.
Conversations quickly became complicated, said Dominguez, who could have been viewed as the big out-of-town developer pushing out Knoxville businesses. But he never wanted to be viewed that way by Bryant, whose product, work ethic and kindness were enough for Dominguez to want to preserve the 1,000-square-foot property.
Dominguez offered Burger Boys a spot inside the new food. It was a perfect solution, Dominguez thought, and one that couldn’t be turned down − until Bryant did just that.
Burger Boys denies Kern’s offer to move inside Knoxville food hall
Dominguez remembers sitting in the Burger Boys parking lot, pitching the food hall and a Burger Boys residency within it. Bryant told Dominguez he was crazy on both counts.
“You really lost your mind,” Dominguez recalls Bryant saying. “And I was like, ‘No, you’re crazy for not going there.”
Bryant previously told Knox News his minimalistic business model was “pandemic-proof” and that the eye-catching location of a local drive-thru among a sea of fast-food chains was part of the reason behind Burger Boys’ success.
To move inside Kern’s would mean assigning official opening and closing hours for Burger Boys. Bryant would need to hire more employees to become a vendor and would have to pay someone else to take out the trash. Burger Boys might not be meant for that kind of business model, Dominguez said.
“No one’s going to do it like you,” Bryant told Knox News in 2021. “It’s hard to find three, four good people.”
Each burger is ‘the best of me.’ What’s next for Burger Boys?
Dominguez said he is working with the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce to honor Bryant with an award during an event at Kern’s.
“I really want him to speak to people and express how someone can overcome challenges through sheer determination because he really is a model of a person that builds something pretty special through his hands and wins a one-person operation,” Dominguez said. “It’s hard to get that kind of commitment day in and day out, and so he has become a loyal friend.”
Bryant ended his Facebook announcement saying he might reopen Burger Boys at a different location in the future.
“Every time I deliver that burger, it’s the best of me,” Bryant said in 2021. “It’s a burger that I would eat − that I want somebody to make for me.”
Joanna Hayes is the restaurant and retail reporter. Email: [email protected]. | Sign up for the free Eat65 newsletter
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