When Brad Butcher and his wife, Lacey, opened the Burg's Scoops Cafe on Main Street in Centerburg in 2018, they asked local residents on Facebook what type of restaurant they wanted.

The results were overwhelming.

"They wanted food," Brad told the Mount Vernon News. "My original intention was to open up a coffee shop. When we were getting ready to open, we did a survey on Facebook. We asked people if they could only choose one, would they want us to have more food options or more coffee options? Seventy percent said they wanted more food options."

Not surprisingly, one of the most popular dishes at the restaurant is the comfort food sausage gravy and biscuit, a warm biscuit topped with sausage gravy.

There are various sandwiches, soup and salad options on the menu as well for lunch. The restaurant is open three days a week until 7 p.m. for customers who may want dinner. 

And then there is the ice cream.

It comes from Hershey Creamery in Pennsylvania, which is actually slightly older than Hershey's chocolate but not connected, Butcher said.

"We offer 12 flavors," Butcher said. "They deliver every other week."

The restaurant never closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, though it did offer takeout only for a while, said Butcher.

"A lot of places shut down at the beginning hoping it was going to be a short storm they could weather," he said. "It turned out to be a very long storm. But we had quite a few members of the community who support our business and continued to come in."

The business benefited from the fact that Butcher and his wife supply about 70% of the labor, he said.

"We didn't have to worry about labor costs when COVID when the business dropped from COVID."

Business is now back up.

"We're getting back on track to where we would have been if COVID had never happened," he said. "One of the things that we attribute to our success is that we try to be part of the community, instead of just a business in it."