Tay Cochran

Staff Photo by Tim Barber Michelle Morrison helps customers Ron McGee and Larry Lewis during lunch at Beef 'O' Brady's in Ooltewah.

Ooltewah residents now have another sit-down restaurant option, with the recent opening of Beef ’O’Brady’s on Snow Hill Road.

The restaurant bills itself as a family pub, and is known in the chain’s home state of Florida for its Buffalo-style chicken wings and the Watterson, a roast beef on rye sandwich, said Tay Cochran, owner of the Ooltewah franchise.

The restaurant bills itself as a family pub and is in the new Snow Hill Village shopping center at Snow Hill and Mountain View roads, which also is home to Publix.

“It’s a place where you can take your kids and have a drink,” he said.

The mid-December opening of Beef ’O’Brady’s was none too soon for Ooltewah, said businessman Steve Ray, owner of the Midnite Oil gas station. There were few sit-down restaurants serving beer with meals, he said. His company held its Christmas party at Beef ’O’Brady’s.

“It’s got a super atmosphere,” Mr. Ray said. “It’s a 100 percent asset to this community.”

Mr. Cochran, a Cincinnati, Ohio, area native, said he picked Ooltewah for his roughly $500,000 business venture in part because his wife, the former Jessica Osborne, is from the community and is a 2002 alumna of Ooltewah High School.

Mr. Cochran said he does not own area franchise rights, but he would like to open a second restaurant in about five years. The restaurant employs about 40 staff and likely will add a few more workers, he said.

The restaurateur said he gained invaluable food service experience from his former businesses, a three-store coffee shop chain in Cincinnati called Full Cup Cafe that his parents founded while he was in high school.

The importance of pleasing customers was his main lesson, he said.

“If the customer is not happy, it doesn’t matter how good the product is,” Mr. Cochran said. “Everybody can make decent food.”

He managed the original coffee shop in Cincinnati in his senior year, he said, and he operated the businesses for about six years before selling them and moving to Ooltewah. He wanted to run a full-service restaurant, he said, and settled on Beef ’O’Brady’s, which has 265 locations in the nation.

Mr. Cochran’s restaurant, decorated in a sports theme, features about 40 televisions and an arcade game room for children, in addition to a bar.

One of the signature menu items, the Watterson roast beef on rye sandwich, was named for a customer at the original Beef ’O’Brady’s in Tampa, Fla., Mr. Cochran said, who designed his own sandwich toppings. The toppings include pickle, tomato, lettuce, mayonnaise and onion. Other menu items include salads, chicken fingers, added sandwiches, hamburgers and deserts.

The national Beef ’O’Brady’s chain supports local school and youth sports leagues, Mr. Cochran said.

“We plan to become an integral part of the Ooltewah community,” he said in a statement. “Already, we have created ties with the community through sponsorship of local sporting organizations.”