Bridgeport’s Big Boy owner reflects on 40-plus ‘glorious’ years in business

BRIDGEPORT TOWNSHIP, MI — Eva Stone said her Big Boy restaurant on Dixie Highway in Bridgeport Township is more than a place to get a meal.

For more than 40 years, her restaurant has been a place for families, friendships, reunions and community.

“I’ve got customers that have been here with me the entire time, quite a few,” Stone said. “When people come home to Bridgeport, they come to Big Boy. It’s almost a time warp; You can walk in, and the same faces are still there. It’s just been really a wonderful thing.”

Stone was 21 years old when she and her late brother Jim Katsoulos opened the restaurant in 1979 with the help of their late father, John Katsoulos, an attorney for Big Boy founders, the Elias brothers.

Now, at 65, she’s preparing to close the doors and retire and reflect on a career she loved.

“I loved it. I still love it. I’ll be crying when I go out the door, I’m sure,” Stone said on a weekday morning in January.

The Big Boy, located at 6301 Dixie Highway in Bridgeport, will continue serving customers four days a week, Thursday through Sunday, through the end of the month, with Sunday, Jan. 29, its final day in business.

Stone said she’d miss her longtime customers and staff, two of whom, Ann Wright and Terry Moore, have worked there since the restaurant was new — a “remarkable thing,” she said.

“I thought I was going to retire from here,” said Wright, who started working at Big Boy as a server in 1981, right after graduating from high school, and has been there ever since. “I wanted to get my 50 years in.”

Moore, who joined the staff as a server that same year, said leaving the restaurant would be “heartbreaking.”

“I’ve had people get tears in their eyes when they find out,” she said. “Nobody wants to believe it.”

Stone said her restaurant has been a special place for both the staff and the customers.

“People become a family, and we’ve had a lot of families over the years,” she said. “It just cultivates a friendship that’s unique to the restaurant industry, which is the best part of it.”

The longtime restaurant owner, who also previously owned a Big Boy in Birch Run, said she feels blessed to have had this career, to have employed thousands of people and to have made countless friendships and memories along the way.

“It’s been glorious,” she said. “It’s been a life.”

Read more from MLive:

Bay County’s Keit’s Greenhouse & Floral Center closing after 167 years

Your guide to Zehnder’s Snowfest 2023

Kreole Queenz brings back king cakes, marking the start of Mardi Gras season

Prost! opens at Uptown Bay City

Michigan’s first Buffalo Wild Wings GO opening in Saginaw

KG’s Bistro opens for business in Essexville

A look back at 2022 business openings, closures in mid-Michigan

Learn how to recession-proof your life at Northwood speaker series