Chubby's: Popular downtown KC diner opens Northland location

One of the great things about living in parts of Platte County is the bustling streets, tall skyscrapers, and swarms of people usually associated with Kansas City’s downtown can be as near or far away as you want.

Chubby’s on Broadway, which has grown into a Kansas City icon for many, recently brought the all-day breakfast menu and old-style cooked burgers associated with their long-time downtown location to the Northland. Not known to have a high supply of breakfast or diner-oriented restaurants, the Northland is now home to a 24-hour diner that has served Kansas City for 23 years and opened its first satellite location on May 23 in the Boardwalk Shopping Center at 6332 NW Barry Road.

Chubby’s, a spin-off name of the favorite hangout “Tubby’s Drive-in” from the 1980’s movie Hollywood Knights, was started by the LaBruzza family in a small diner on Independence Avenue in 1988. The business later moved to a storefront space on Broadway before eventually expanding to the location it’s now called home for ten years. Nick and Vito LaBruzza took over the family business a couple years ago from their father, also named Nick. However, the Northland location is owned and operated by Vito’s brother-in-law, Vince Frew, whose sister married into the family several years ago.

Frew, a lifelong Northlander, had thought about and talked through several different ideas for an expansion, one of which included a Gladstone location and smaller concept of a 6am-2pm Chubby’s Express. But when 54th Street Bar & Grill opted to move across the interstate into Zona Rosa in 2010, they left a location already fitted to serve another quality restaurant. Having worked in AmeriStar Casino’s restaurants for nearly 11 years, it was in 2009 that Frew started working with his brother-in-laws at their Broadway location to learn the business better.

“I wanted to learn how they did things. They’ve been in business for 23 years, obviously they’re doing something right,” Frew said. “We had talked about putting one up here (Northland), but that one (on Broadway) keeps them busy enough, so I just licensed the name from them.”

While the concept and menu are identical, Chubby’s on Barry hopes to capitalize on the area’s breakfast and late night voids not only by serving breakfast all-day, but also staying open 24-hours on the weekends to capitalize on the handful of bars in the area open until 3 a. m.

“There’s very limited breakfast around here. I’d like to think our food is better than IHOP or Waffle House,” Frew said. “In that regard, I don’t think anyone can compete with us in terms of portion size and quality of food in my opinion. With the overnight crowd, we’ve got the potential to do really well.”

One difference between the Broadway and Barry locations is that the Northland location will soon have a liquor license and carry a limited selection of wine and beer.

“Hopefully sometime in August, we’ll have beer and wine,” Frew said. “A limited selection, because this isn’t a bar and grill, but we’ll have it available for people that want it.”

A veteran of the food service industry, Frew says they’ve gone through the same things any new restaurant goes through which explains his cautious approach to opening the business. He wanted all the kinks worked out before aggressively marketing the new location.

“We’ve had our ups and downs, but that’s expected and why we’ve gone light on our advertising with a softer opening. I’m a little more comfortable now and we’ll probably start advertising more soon,” Frew said.

Even with a presence that spans over two decades in Kansas City, Frew says there are as many people exciting about the opening of their restaurant as there are those who aren’t as familiar.

“There are a lot of people that were excited to get one up north after going to the one downtown, but we still get a lot of people that don’t know we’re here yet,” Frew said. “For as long as Chubby’s has been in Kansas City, there are still some people who’ve never heard of it.”

As far as menu items, Chubby’s will feature their old-style hamburgers, which are cooked on a flat-top, not on a grill, so as Frew says “all the juice stays in the burger, not a drop of seasoning on it like it has been all along.” To go with it, chocolate shakes and malts. And of course, the all-day breakfast menu features omelettes, biscuits and gravy, and other traditional morning choices.