BRUNSWICK– In the four weeks since Brunswick’s landmark Fat Boy Drive-In was listed for-sale, Victor Tedford is still receiving calls daily from dozens of people interested in purchasing the restaurant.

Listed at $1.15 million, Tedford, a listing agent with Magnusson and Balfour, said the price includes the business and number of tangible — and intangible — amenities, like decades worth of loyal customers. Owners Ken and Jeanne Burton, who have owned Fat Boy for more than 30 years, said they hope that whoever buys the establishment will keep many of its long-standing traditions alive, as Ken did when he took over the business from his father in the mid-1980s.

Despite the holiday season, there have been several showing to interested people that have been mostly promising and, Tedford joked, quite “efficient” due to the lack of heat in the seasonal establishment.

He stressed that the business being on the market was “not a fire sale,” and he is working to make sure the Burtons “benefit from the years of work they’ve put in.”

Ideally, he said, the new owner will be someone “motivated and energetic,” who is looking to keep up the traditions that have made Fat Boy “successful for decades” and that most of the interested parties aim to do just that.  

“Almost everyone has had the view of, ‘If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it,’” Tedford said, adding that most people have expressed that any changes they would make would be small.

While there is no hard deadline for the sale, he said the hope is to have a buyer before March or early April when Fat Boy reopens, so a transition could be as smooth as possible, if the new owner intends to keep things as they are.

Fat Boy first opened in 1955 when drive-in diners were in their heyday. The Burton’s two children and five grandchildren have all been Fat Boy employees, making this a true family affair for generations. But after more than 30 years and working “24 hours a day,” he and his family are “all burnt out” and it is time to move on, Ken Burton said when the “for sale” sign first went up.

Burton said good food, good service and good prices have kept the restaurant going even as other drive-in diners have fallen by the wayside and chains like McDonald’s have nudged many family-owned businesses out the door.

He added that if, after the sale, Fat Boy remains the restaurant he has known and worked for his entire adult life, he would “love to be a customer there some day.”

hlaclaire@timesrecord.com

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