The new Hot Spot in Dubois
“I wanted to do something on my own and I heard this place was for sale and thought, ‘well, why not,'” Derek Breitweiser said about his purchase of the Mathies Café in Dubois.
The 23-year-old Cuzco native reopened the café as Hot Spot Bar & Grill in March with some added menu items and a new interior look.
Derek has been a member of the Dubois Volunteer Firefighter for four years. He mixed that experience there with some added technology to come up with the new moniker for the old gathering spot. “I wanted to incorporate the fire department and when you are fighting fires you have hot spots to look out for,” he explained. “Plus, we have WiFi; another name for that is a hot spot, so I thought that would be a neat name to incorporate those things into it.”
Derek says he has always been interested in serving the community. After graduating from Northeast Dubois in 2009, he completed a two-year degree in conservation law enforcement at Vincennes University.
He joined the Dubois Volunteer Fire Department because he enjoys helping people and being active in the community.
With his interest in service and his background in cooking (Don Sanders’, the owner of Sanders Catering, sister was Derek’s babysitter and she got him a job at Sanders Catering when he was a teen) the new business suits him.
The reinvigorated eatery has attracted some new and some old customers back. Plus, with the WiFi, many customers now sit around conversing and perusing their phones in one of the cellularly-hobbled town’s few hot spot locations.
Derek doesn’t mind. “It’s fun, I get to talk to people all day long.”
Derek has cleaned the place up; it’s now smoke free and a coat of fresh paint has been added to the ceiling and walls. The family dining area now has some added fire fighting elements. A fire hose wraps around the room as a chair rail and fire fighting gear hangs from the wall while a fire hydrant sits on the floor.
He added some items to the menu as well. New are the Philly cheese steak, reuben, frog legs, and stuffed burgers — a three-quarter-pound burger stuffed with a choice of onions, bell peppers, jalapenos, mushrooms and topped with A-1 Steak Sauce or barbecue sauce.
The future includes knocking out a wall between the bar and a private meeting room to expand the bar and adding soft erve ice cream to the offerings.
He would also like to start offering beer and liquor catering. Soft serve ice cream is something that may come next year.
Hot Spot Bar & Grill LLC is located at 5416 E. Main St. in Dubois. It is open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays, 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays and 9 a.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays. The phone number is 812-678-2772 and here is the restaurant’s Facebook page.
A grand opening celebration is scheduled for Saturday, July 26.
Derek is the son of Gary Breitweiser and Katrina Buse.
