When Dwayne Brown got the opportunity to open a new location of Load A Spud, he knew he couldn’t pass it up. The health-conscious Uptown, Edgewater and Rogers Park native was a fan of the potato bar franchise’s gluten-free food, and he had a feeling the restaurant would be good for his Rogers Park community.
“It’s healthy, it’s easy, it’s priced well and you can just take it home to your family,” Brown said. “It’s great for the neighborhood, because it’s very diverse here. It’s just a very good meal.”
Now, after signing a lease for a roughly 1,200-square-foot space on West Howard Street, he’s on his way to opening Chicago’s second Load A Spud.
He expects he’ll open the restaurant in December or in early 2022 at the latest — right in the middle of winter, the perfect time to be serving piping hot baked potatoes.
Load A Spud is a bit like Subway, but rather than footlong sandwiches, diners choose toppings for a 1-pound (or more) baked potato. After seeing the success of the flagship Load A Spud in Grand Rapids, Mich. and its two outposts in Kalamazoo, Mich. and on East 51st Street, Brown doesn’t anticipate making too many changes to the restaurant’s menu — though he will take customer requests into consideration.
“I’m not going to reinvent the wheel,” Brown said. “But if we have customers who come in and say, ‘Can you do this?’, we’ll try it out and see if it works.”
It’s hard to imagine any new experiments customers could come up with — Load A Spud’s menu has something for practically everyone. Among its 20 signature potatoes are a taco potato, with a jerk chicken potato, with seasoned jerk chicken and cheese; a gyro potato, with gyro strips, feta, onion and tomatoes; and a surf and turf potato with shrimp and steak or chicken and cheese. All items come with a choice of butter — options include sour cream, original, garlic, or the house butter — and diners can choose from a variety of vegetables as well.
Still, if someone has new ideas, Brown is more than willing to entertain them. It goes back to his philosophy about who the restaurant is really for.
“We’re in it for the people, you know?” he said. “For the community to be able to go home happy and feed their families, that’s very important to me.
This article has been updated to add more context about where Dwayne Brown grew up.
