From working behind the griddle to establishing locations across state lines, Tracii and Derrell Hutsona built their restaurant from the ground up with a powerful message behind one word – bitch.
At Breakfast Bitch, where “bitch” is a word that comes from a place of love, there’s one central belief – “A bitch gotta eat!”
“My main thing is that I didn’t want the B word to be misconstrued, and it was really, really important to us to make sure that that wasn’t a gateway to profanity,” Tracii said. “We don’t berate anyone. It’s all in love and positive vibes, right?”
Breakfast Bitch’s core is hiring a team of good people, not just good workers.
“I think the atmosphere and the people are my favorite part,” employee Kierstan Kleinholz said. “Especially on weekends when we have a DJ. It doesn’t really feel like work, it just kind of feels like we’re just like hanging out with friends.”
The Phoenix location was built after a San Jose, California debut – and it’s booming.
People travel from all over to have the Breakfast Bitch experience, which includes being greeted at the door with “Hey bitches!”, ordering from an original menu with catchy names like the Feisty Bitch Quesadilla, Bitch.L.T., and Boujee Bitch. There’s also a special birthday song for guests and a live DJ on Sundays.
“[Creating Breakfast Bitch] was a little intimidating at first, but you just don’t give up, you just grind and keep going and learning and listening,” Tracii said. “The best thing I did, I think, was just listen to our customer base and pay attention and know when you find good people.”
Breakfast Bitch has been wildly successful in Phoenix, as is demonstrated by their four-hour weekend wait times. The restaurant was encouraged to move a block south to Roosevelt Street in downtown Phoenix, where they expanded into three separate culinary concepts, all under one roof.
This includes the original Breakfast Bitch concept, a sports bar called 4th Quarter, and a champagne and coffee lounge.
“The new location is awesome,” employee Alexis Ellison said. “There’s a lot more seating, new aspects [of the restaurant], like we’re able to have a larger coffee area with more options, where before we didn’t.”
Roosevelt Row Apartments, a residential community settled above Breakfast Bitch, benefited from the move as well. Residents have early access to the coffee bar an hour before the restaurant opens and gets a special VIP discount.
“We’re able to serve the community in ways that the space we took over was not,” Tracii said. “The cafe was important to me to have that here for the residents and the community.”
The big move helped the restaurant to reduce their four-hour wait times, provide guests with a more attentive experience, add more seating, a wider variety of dining options, and create jobs for people in the Phoenix area.
With their new location and later hours, Breakfast Bitch is exposed to a new demographic – the nightlife population of downtown Phoenix.
“It’s right off Roosevelt Row which I think is awesome because First Fridays are always right there, so I think that’s going to get a lot of people in, and having the sports bar is definitely alluring to them,” Ellison said.
Not only have the guest’s experiences improved, but the flow of the restaurant and the collaboration between co-workers has been refined.
“I’d say the teamwork definitely came together and showed how much we care about the company – everybody and all,” Ellison said. “When we got over here, it was chaos. But we all worked together to figure it out, and I think that’s really important.”
Breakfast Bitch offers what no other downtown Phoenix breakfast joint can – a nightclub experience at brunch.
At Breakfast Bitch every Sunday morning from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Breakfast Bitch has DJ Casanova live in the restaurant to provide energizing music for guests on brunch’s busiest day.
The company is in the early stages of franchising and welcomes any interested partners to take the opportunity.
