Buddy’s set to open Thursday in Clinton
Sandy Hayes, left, corporate supervisor of operations, and Doug Reinerio, district man- ager, stand at the counter of the new Buddy’s bar-b-q location in Clinton that will open Thursday on North Charles G. Seivers Boulevard near Interstate 75, Exit 122. (photo:G. Chambers Williams III )
Employees have been in training during the past two weeks as final touches were put on the store, inside and out, and the hickory wood smoker was being readied to cook the meat, said Sandy Hayes, supervisor of operations for the Knoxville-based barbecue chain.
“We’ve hired 30 employees already,” she said late last week, toward the goal of about 40. “We will be using a lot of teenagers, especially in the evenings.”
The store anchors a new four-unit strip center in the Glen Alpine Mixed-Use Retail Development at 2200-2206 N. Charles G. Seivers Blvd, next to where a Shell gasoline station/convenience center and Baskins-Robbins ice cream store stood. The site is about a half-mile off Interstate 75’s Exit 122, toward Clinton.
Store hours will be 10:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, and 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Hayes said. No breakfast hours are planned at this time.
Other than breakfast, which is offered at some Buddy’s locations, the Clinton menu will be the same as the other sites, said Hayes, who has been with the company 36 years.
“We’re going to have the same specials as the other stores, too,” she said. That includes plates with a meat and two sides for $5.99 on Tuesdays, and all-you-can-eat ribs on Saturdays.
Buddy’s also offers chili, iced tea and lemonade, and a variety of desserts, including the signature LaMuriel’s lemon pie, hot fudge cake and gourmet chocolate chip cookies.
Besides indoor dining, the Clinton Buddy’s has an outdoor patio in front of the restaurant that can seat up to 32 diners, with some tables under umbrella-style awnings. There is also a drive-through window.
Online ordering is also available, Hayes said.
The building housing Buddy’s has a total of 7,800 square feet, of which about 3,650 square feet is taken up by the barbecue restaurant. The other three spaces in the building so far have no tenants signed, said Andy Hillmer, one of the developers of the center and principal broker for Southern Commercial Real Estate in Knoxville.
Hillmer said the three additional spaces have 1,300, 1,235 and 1,606 square feet each. The lease terms shown on Southern Commercial’s website are for five years at a rate of $26 per square foot annually for the first two, and $30 for the largest space, which sits on the end of the building opposite the Buddy’s.
On its website (looplink.southerncommercial.com/Listing/2200-Charles-Seivers-Clinton-TN/14115347/) Southern Commercial says of the site:
“Glen Alpine Mixed Use Development consists of 23 acres located at N. Charles G. Seivers Blvd. and Glen Alpine Dr. in Clinton, TN less than a mile from I-75. Development will include two retail buildings and restaurant/retail out parcels fronting Charles Seivers Blvd. along with box retail/office/industrial/multi-family lots for sale.
“Traffic count at the site is over 31k/cars per day and site is surrounded by restaurants, retail, medical, office, banks, hotels and at the entrance to the I-75 industrial park. Clinton is a booming market located 25 minutes from downtown Knoxville and fast growing in population and all types of industry.”
As for Buddy’s, it will be the 18th location for the barbecue chain, which was founded in 1972 by Buddy Smothers and his wife, LaMuriel. The first Buddy’s was on Kingston Pike in West Knoxville.
Buddy’s, whose closest locations to Clinton now are in Oak Ridge and Powell, is known for its barbecued pork and chicken, as well as its ribs and the lemon ice-box pie. It’s also differentiated from other barbecue restaurants by its drive-through window.
Current owner Mark Lemoncelli, whose wife Jaime Smothers Lemoncelli is the granddaughter of Buddy Smothers, bought the Buddy’s bar-b-q operations from the Smothers family on Feb. 1, 2019.
Mark Lemoncelli also is owner of a Jason’s Deli restaurant in Knoxville. A native of New Jersey, he moved to Knoxville in 1995 at age 18 to attend the University of Tennessee, and has been in the city ever since, he said. His mother, father and sister also have moved here, and his father, James Lemoncelli, and sister, Lisa Edwards, are partners with him in Buddy’s bar-b-q.