A Farewell to Bubbalou's Winter Park Location

It was sad to learn that, as of September 11 2021, the flagship restaurant of the Bubbalou's Bodacious Bar-B-Q restaurants in Winter Park was closing. The barbecue small chain has quite a history. It stems from the work of the Meiner family. Mack Meiner began it with a set bar-b-q restaurants around Orange County in the 1970s. The Meiner's restaurant was themed as rustic as structures were in Florida and the western U.S. over one hundred years ago.

The restaurant on North Orange Blossom Trail had wagon wheels at the entrance. There was also a little area in the location to buy things. Seems Mack had seen the up and coming Cracker Barrel, that first opened in 1969. Meiner's was very popular and one of the few bar-b-q spots in Orange County. The restaurants. though, only lasted about ten years and closed as Mack Meiner had other interests, such as traveling around the world and antiques. Later he and his brother, Charlie, had an antique store, 'Cheap Charlies', along east Colonial Drive, near Interstate 4.

It was a few years later that children of Meiner popped back in 1986 with Bubbalou's Bodacious Bar-B-Q on Lee Road  in Winter Park. At that, a young Meiner, Boo McKinnon joined in the venture and now runs three locations all these years later. There were other barbecue places in 1986 around Orange County and the area. There was Barney's, Sonny's and a number of others. There were many other places that focused on beef and steak, like The Imperial House and Freddie's Steak House. As the '80s drifted into the '90s. most of those closed. The sit down restaurant faded as fast food became the popular fare of the area, as it still is today. Bubbalou's is a sit-down location, but a casual one. Despite all of the closings of so many beef spots, the Meiner tradition has continued.

Unfortunately, the flagship, has now closed. The reason why is really, really unfortunate. The busy spot did not close due to lack of business, but lack of employees.  Due to the virus situation, the U.S. government start handing out checks since Summer 2020 and has continued doing so into this year. Basically telling folks they didn't have to work and still get money to pay bills.

It's just been a month or so since our Florida governor decided to stop that as he could. Since our lower wage jobs are basically based in the service industry, the handing out of cash has caused a tailspin in service and operation of businesses, especially small one, statewide. Now businesses are begging for employees, including Boo at Bubbalou's. She just couldn't keep employees at the Winter Park location.

Through the Summer she was pouring all of her energy into Winter Park location and away from the other locations. She realized something had to give. Thus, the Lee Road location was closed after 35 years of operation. The loss of Lee Road is sad, but also good tidings of the other locations will remain open and available for all of us to continue the Meiner bar-b-que tradition.