WORDS: Kara Chalmers
PICTURES: Whitney Patton
More than 20 years ago, Mike
Osmond moved to Bradenton,
without a job but with a great
idea. He’d been working in construction
in North Carolina when his then-boss
asked him to return to Pennsylvania for
work. Osmond declined - Pennsylvania
was too cold, he thought - and instead
quit his job and moved to Bradenton,
where his father, Jim, was living.
His plan: to open a restaurant similar to
a place he frequented in Raleigh, NC
- a place he appreciated for its simple
menu and “really good frozen custard
ice cream.” He described the place to
his father.
“My dad and I sat there and thought,
‘We could do something like this in
Bradenton.’” The two picked the name -
SweetBerries - because they knew they
wanted the menu to feature berries. “And
frozen custard is sweet,” Osmond added.
Osmond found a location for his eatery
- a former paint store. He had to
completely renovate the space, but his
construction background helped with
that, he said. However, neither he - nor
anyone in his family - had ever worked
in the restaurant business.
“It was totally a family business,” Osmond
said, adding that it would never have
been successful without the input of
his father, his grandmother Gert, his
wife Cindy, and his son Brandon. “They
all worked hard to make the business
a success.”
Fast forward 20 years and SweetBerries
Eatery & Frozen Custard is celebrating
its anniversary of its opening in June
1999. Osmond describes the menu as
“lunch-style,” featuring soups, salads,
custard. There were too many “idle
hours” so Osmond re-opened the place
as a restaurant a month later. “We’ve
never really had a bad day since,” he said.
Learning the Ropes
In addition to the Bradenton SweetBerries,
the Osmond’s own and operate two other
locations, one in Sarasota, which opened
15 years ago, and one in Gainesville,
According to Osmond, the family’s
never been willing to compromise
on quality, citing real vanilla extract,
real chocolate chunks, fresh berries,
and butter roasted nuts as just a
few examples of SweetBerries’ high
quality ingredients. “That’s a reason why
we’ve been around for 20 years,” he said.
“You have to do more things right than
you do wrong to be successful in the
restaurant business.”
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