When Otis Britt announced via Facebook that his restaurant would close at the end of the month, he expected the lamenting wall posts.
He expected the 46 comments that piled onto his page, such as “This sucks!! Seriously, the worst thing ever.”
But he didn’t expect the solitary “like” that popped up shortly after his announcement.
That “like” came from his 18-year-old son, Keary Britt.
After four-and-a-half years of 70-hour weeks, working 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. shifts every day, Britt said his son and 9-year-old daughter would be glad to have some free time with their parents.
And since seeing business drop from 200 customers a week to 110, losing $30,000 this year and having to sell his brand-new Nissan Altima for money to put into the restaurant, Britt said he’s glad to be home, too.
But in 2007, he remembers, he couldn’t be more excited to open his own business.
After managing a Perkins for 16 years, Britt and his wife, then a real estate agent, bought the plate-glass-windowed shop at 1023 W University Ave.
A wheelchair ramp and three stairs lead the way up the split-level floor to the counter, making it look like an altar to fast-food innovation.
Their first menu consisted of 14 hot dogs.
After enough requests for French fries, they got those, too.
Now, the menu boasts about 75 different burgers, hot dogs, fries and sandwiches.
The menu includes such items as the Heart Attack Dawg, a hot dog wrapped in bacon, deep fried and topped with cheese sauce and fried onions; the Colombia Dawg, which sports mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, onion, bacon, cheese, pineapple and potato chips; and the self-explanatory Peanut Butter Burger.
He said the hardest-to-make item is the Bull Dawg, a 3-pound pile of chili cheese fries, fried bell peppers and bacon; somewhere under which is a hamburger wrapped in a hot dog; all of which would be hard to fit on a shovel.
Britt’s logic: “Yeah, let’s take a burger and put it in a hot dog and just put god-awful stuff on it.”
Colin and Dana McLeod have been eating Gator Dawgs once a month since they decided to stop in after driving by two years ago. Colin, a 24-year-old grad student, usually gets the Bacon, Egg and Cheese Dawg. Dana gets the Chicago Dawg, topped with yellow mustard, onion, relish, tomato, dill pickle, hot pepper and celery salt.
They sat with their friends Wednesday night laughing and watching football.
Between them sat two tables, six hot dogs, three bottles of hot sauce, three bottles of water and a bottle of ketchup.
Asked what they would do when Gator Dawgs closes in a month, the group paused for a moment before the silence was broken by Dana McLeod.
“You know, there is no place in Gainesville like this if you think about it,” she said.
