Bubba’s fried chicken restaurant closed in Frisco

Bubba’s Cooks Country, a fried chicken restaurant with more than 40 years of history in Dallas-Fort Worth, closed on Preston Road in Frisco. Its last day in business was July 16, 2023.

It was the second Bubba’s in North Texas, following the restaurant that opened in 1981 across the street from Southern Methodist University in University Park. That longtime restaurant will remain open.

The Frisco restaurant had been open for four years, a majority of which was during the coronavirus pandemic. Tiffany Vinyard Wheeless, co-owner of Bubba’s, told The Dallas Morning News the newer restaurant didn’t meet sales goals and fell short of profitability objectives.

“We really tried to make it work. We all live in Frisco, so having it as our back door — we loved it,” she said.

The Vinyards have a long history in Dallas restaurants, and it’s rare to see one of their restaurants close. Their first Bubba’s is a Dallas staple, built into a 1920s-era gas station in Snider Plaza. Its drive-through thrived during the pandemic, selling comforting food like bone-in chicken, yeast rolls, and mashed potatoes to a line of social-distanced customers whose cars snaked through the shopping center.

Bubba’s also serves eggs, biscuits and gravy, and pancakes for breakfast seven mornings a week.

When the family opened the Frisco restaurant, company president Joel Vinyard said his family had been “looking for the right kind of location for a long time” — decades. We called it one of the most exciting new restaurants of the year because the expansion was rare.

Despite the closure, the family will still consider expanding Bubba’s elsewhere, Wheeless said.

“We’ll have to sit back and look,” she said. “And see what we could do differently.”

The employees at the Frisco restaurant were offered jobs at the family’s other restaurants: Babe’s Chicken Dinner House, a meat-and-sides Southern shop that started in Roanoke in 1993 and has expanded to Garland, Sanger, Carrollton, Granbury, Cedar Hill and more; and Sweetie Pie’s Ribeyes in Decatur and North Richland Hills.

Bubba’s Cooks Country closed at 4585 Preston Road, Frisco, after service on July 16, 2023. The restaurant at 6617 Hillcrest Ave. (in Snider Plaza), Dallas, remains in operation.

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