In their businesses and in their lives, giving back to the community is what matters
By David Blanchette
When Kim and Brad Fellhauer first met, neither one of them dreamed that one day they’d be the married owners of several iconic Jacksonville food and banquet establishments.
It all started when Brad and four of his buddies tried to get a meal at a restaurant that Kim was running at the corner of North Main and Walnut streets.
“We got there 10 minutes late and she refused to let us in her restaurant,” Brad recalled. “She saw us coming, opened the door, said ‘Sorry, we’re closed,’ and just left us standing there.”
Kim remembers that fateful first meeting as well.
“Yes I do, and it’s still hard to believe that we’ve been married for 15 years. Seems more like 30,” Kim said with a laugh.
The Fellhauers are the owners and operators of Kim’s Place Cafe at 211 E. Court St.; Kim’s Other Place, the former SafeCo Bakery, at 218 W. Morton Ave.; Black Tie Catering and Bartending; and the business that Brad founded before their marriage, Bogart’s Banquet Hall, on East State Street near the Old State Road.
The Fellhauers are also very involved in supporting the community. Brad is the past president of the Jacksonville Kiwanis Club and has held leadership roles with Big Brothers Big Sisters, Women’s Crisis Center and Jacksonville Area Center for Independent Living. He is the current president of the Alvin Eades Center, and vice president of Elm City Center.
Kim and Brad routinely donate leftover food from Bogart’s banquets to area crisis or homeless shelters and take donuts from Kim’s Other Place to churches, police and fire departments, hospitals and other locations when people are not physically able to visit the shop.
Then there’s the annual Veterans Day meal at Kim’s Place, where any veteran receives a free meal and dessert from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. This year, the Fellhauers served more than 260 veterans on Monday, November 11.
“It’s expensive, but it pales in comparison to what they did,” said Brad, who is a Vietnam era veteran himself. “I’ve always had a good place in my heart for veterans. And at Bogart’s I’ve never charged for a benefit event, nor will I. It’s the right thing to do.”
Kim is happy to join her husband in helping those in the Jacksonville community.
“This shows a side of Brad that not many people get to see, but he’s a softie when it comes to kids and the less fortunate,” Kim said. “We’ve always done these things and will continue to do them.”
The Fellhauer food and banquet story began when Brad got out of the Army and received his first experience in the business by working at an Oklahoma nightclub. He also worked for a while as a sales representative in the medical field, and then had the opportunity to get into the nightclub business again during a visit to his hometown of Jacksonville.
“My brother Odell was asking me questions about the bar business, and it turns out he and a partner were looking to buy into the old Chevy’s nightclub, which eventually became Bogart’s,” Brad said. “He chose not to do it, but his partner Travis Baptist offered me a job running the club. I ended up leasing Chevy’s from him, got out of the business for a while, came back in 1991 and ended up buying it. I thought I’d keep it a couple of years, flip it and move on. That was 33 years ago.”
The first order of business was renaming the establishment, and there was never any doubt what Brad would call it.
“I’ve been a fan of Humphrey Bogart movies since I was a kid,” Brad said. “He was an actor who was ahead of his time.”
Bogart’s Banquet Hall has since become a major go-to location for wedding, graduation, bridal shower or get-togethers of any size. The facility can hold up to 475 people. The establishment is currently on the market but if it doesn’t sell, the Fellhauers will do some more work on the facility and keep it in operation.
One fun fact about Bogart’s – the Fellhauers have adapted the west end of the building as their house and they reside there, something that is not obvious to the casual observer.
Black Tie Catering and Bartending was founded in 2007 and operated out of Bogart’s until recently when the operation moved to Kim’s Place. Brad credits George Hamilton of Hamilton’s Catering for teaching him everything he knows about the business and occasionally
“bailing me out when I needed help.”
After Brad and Kim were married, the couple acquired and operated Bogie’s, a cafe on North Main Street that has since closed, and owned the Central Illinois APA Pool League, an area billiard players franchise. Those ventures kept the Fellhauers busy enough, but one day an opportunity arose when Brad learned that the owner-operator of Norma’s Cafe in downtown Jacksonville was retiring.
“I told Kim that Norma [Koyne] was retiring soon and she said, ‘That’s too bad.’ And I said, ‘Well, do you want to buy it?’” Brad recalled. “Her employees did not know she was closing so when she had a meeting to tell them, Norma was able to inform them that Kim and I would be taking over.”
Following a 10-day renovation, the establishment re-opened as Kim’s Place on August 18, 2021. As the name implies, it truly is Kim’s place.
“I’ve been a cook for 43 years and that’s what I love to do, I’m back of the line and I especially like cooking breakfast,” said Kim recently as she demonstrated how she flips her fried eggs. “Brad socializes better, he’s more of the PR part of the business, but I can stand here and cook all day long, and often do.”
Kim likes being called a “good, old-fashioned mom and pop” type cook.
“My customers don’t want anything fancy, and unlike many restaurants, I season my food so they know to try it first before adding salt and pepper,” Kim said. “When we try something new, we run it as special for a day to see what people think.”
Kim and Brad weren’t looking for another venture but when they heard that Jacksonville’s only donut shop, SafeCo, was for sale, they decided to add that operation to their repertoire in late 2022 and renamed it Kim’s Other Place.
“It wouldn’t be bad to get a bigger location and expand the donut shop because there are so many more things that we can offer,” Brad said. “We’ve got excellent bakers and the place kind of runs itself. Some people have approached us to buy it, but nothing has come to fruition yet.”
One thing that’s not for sale, however, is Kim’s Place.
“We would be hard pressed to ever let this go,” Brad said. “We love this place, we are friends with all of our customers, and the banter that goes back and forth in here every day is pretty funny — it keeps everybody entertained.”
