2 days Ago
Fat Man’s Café. Practically a legend in Augusta: the caricature Fat Man with the big schnozz inviting people in for food that’s just “soul good.” Fat Man’s wasn’t always at the historic Enterprise Mill.
Fat Man’s wasn’t even always Fat Man’s, if you go back far enough and start the story with his father’s curbside market. The Fat Man’s legacy goes back more than 70 years, before the burgers and shakes at Sno-Cap (itself a fixture in North Augusta for 60 years but only in the Fat Man’s portfolio for about five). It goes back to a time before the “Speshuls” at The Pit (because even when Fat Man was on the scene, the restaurant business wasn’t always Fat Man’s Café).
There’s a bar, a Yankee salesman, a head cook named Pearl who stayed on for decades. There’s a woman who served the city of Augusta before consolidation and, rumor has it, threw her pocketbook at the mayor. And Miss America herself commissioned for a little marketing scheme.
Horace "Fat Man" Usry "loved a good marketing scheme," his son, Brad, recalled. Like having Miss America come down to promote the business. It was Brad Usry, president of Fat Man’s Hospitality Group, who told his family’s story.
He had the ears of about 70 people at Augusta Museum of History on Feb. 12, invited for the museum’s Brown Bag lecture series. The timeline, sure, for structure – but the story really told through the personalities and the anecdotes, through grainy footage of Brad’s father, Horace Usry, the “Original Fat Man,” grinning from under his hat, cigar between his teeth, selling flock trees in the early days of Fat Man’s Forest.
Not that this is even the beginning. The progenitor of Fat Man’s was a bar and the Sanitary, a curbside market, owned by Darnell “Dun Jon” Usry, Horace’s father and Brad’s grandfather. Horace, whose family nickname was “Fat Man,” bought that market, expanded into full-service grocery and put up a new sign: no longer the Sanitary, but Fat Man’s Corner, and everything fell into place.
Whatever you want, "The Fat Man's Got 'em!" Even after the Fat Man bought his father's Sanitary Curb Market and renamed it Fat Man's Corner, the nod to Darnell "Dun" Jon still popped up here and there (right). “My dad understood branding before it was a thing,” Brad said. “He hand-drew a little fat man as his logo; he picked three bold colors – yellow, red and green; he intentionally misspelled words like a country boy might do.
He even created his own font for signs we still use today.” Not one to back down on a business opportunity, Fat Man’s Corner soon became something more, something the name would be synonymous with for almost 60 years: Christmas. It was “a Yankee salesman from New York who changed everything,” Brad said.
The Yank convinced Fat Man Usry that Christmas trees and Christmas decor were the way to go, and the 1950s ushered in Fat Man’s Forest, the first stake in the ground for a business that would eventually stretch for more than a block along Gwinnett Street, now Laney Walker Boulevard. The real estate portfolio grew and grew and became a veritable emporium that traded in retail services – dry cleaning, shoe repair and vacuum repair, a barbershop, all of it spun out of Fat Man’s Forest. “Fatsville” then added a pumpkin patch and got in the Halloween business of costume rental.
“The Pit” opened, serving some of the recipes still on order today. Brad recalled chasing down the coins that would fall behind the jukebox, the only one in the family then small enough to get behind there. The 1970 Augusta Riots that spilled onto Laney Walker, Fatsville was in the thick of it.
The 1973 winter storm – the 11 inches of snow and ice collapsed the Christmas warehouse. And in 1976 Horace “Fat Man” Usry died of cancer. “He was an entrepreneur before folks knew what that meant,” Brad said of his father.
“He was eccentric, loved a good marketing scheme and never met a business he feared.” The Usry family kept going, led now by Horace’s wife, Carolyn. In the 1980s alone, Fatsville’s buildings and warehouses and markets grew by a combined nearly 20,000 square feet, all of it connected by tunnels (Brad with humorous affection recalls they were rather leaky tunnels but still, it “made a trip to Fat Man’s the ultimate adventure.
”) Carolyn Usry's death in 2005 gave a moment's uncertainty to the Fat Man's legacy - but only a moment. Soon after, Fat Man's Cafe opened at Enterprise Mill. At its peak, Brad said, the business sold two tons of boiled peanuts in a season.
And, to add to the Fat Man’s force, Carolyn Usry had just been elected to the Augusta City Council. “She was a true legend, a business pioneer and a champion for Augusta,” Brad said of his mother. Moreover, Carolyn was a “great mom” to him and his sisters, who also helped with the business.
Brad said she once threw her pocketbook at the mayor, all in making a point. Carolyn’s death in 2005 led to another era in the business. The retail end of it closed within a couple years, but the Usrys also doubled down on the kind of business that Fat Man’s is known for today: food.
A 16-year-old girl named Pearl was the first head cook, and she worked for the Usrys ‘til she was nearly 70. It’s her recipes, Brad said, that are still made today. North Augusta's Sno-Cap Drive-In entered the Fat Man's portfolio in 2019.
Fat Man’s Cafe at Enterprise Mill is what The Pit used to be. And keeping with the Fat Man’s tradition, the group’s other restaurants – Southern Salad on Broad Street; Sno-Cap in North Augusta and, soon, a brick-and-mortar for Bradley’s BBQ – are investments in properties and brands that have their own histories. They are all part of the Fat Man’s Hospitality Group.
“We saw our dad’s vision come to reality, but it was time to move into a different direction,” Brad said. And Brad has his son, Havird Usry, in the business now, too. Never satisfied with the status quo, Brad said.
“A lot has happened since my grandfather’s curbside market, and the story is still being written. We’re a family that loves a challenge.”.
