White bread buns. Ground beef. A flavorful, tomato-based sauce.
It’s a simple but powerful combination for Bobbie Sue Trammel.
She has made the sandwiches a weekly habit since she tried them three months ago at a small Lakewood restaurant in a shopping center near her work.
Trammel is a regular at Simply Sloppy Joes, 6761 West Mississippi in Lakewood, where — as the name suggests — sloppy joes are the specialty.
“The food is excellent,” said Trammel, who walked in on a Wednesday afternoon to buy lunch for the next day. “It’s like homemade.”
Customers like Trammel and word of mouth are the reason why the small eatery run by two sisters has made it to its first anniversary last month and is now a thriving business.
“We turned on the ‘open’ sign, and they’ve been coming,” said Jennifer Loberg, who runs the business with her sister Julie Jarzynski, making friendly, upbeat and high-energy team.
The menu is straightforward — with six kinds of sloppy joes to pick from, including a special monthly flavor.
Beyond that, options include sloppy dog, 10 flavors of shakes, chips, cole slaw and beans.
And for dessert, there are Joe Cookies, small vanilla wafers sandwiching a thin mint, frosting and green-colored coconut, that end up looking like a tiny sloppy joe sandwich.
“We wanted to keep it simple,” Loberg said.
In a cozy 500-square-foot space with a checkered floor, the food is made fresh daily and sits behind a glass partition with signs for the different options that day: Regular, spicy, Midwestern, barbecue and plain jane.
The dishes are the combined result of sister Julie Jarzynski’s culinary abilities and some family recipes, they said.
“I’ve been making sloppy joes forever,” Jarzynski said, as she stood with a black apron. “The only regret I have is I didn’t do (this) 20 years ago.”
The idea for the business was born, appropriately enough, over a meal.
Jarynski had just lost a job and was at home making dinner, contemplating her next step.
As it turns out, she was making sloppy joes, Loberg recalled.
“She was saying, ‘What am I gonna do with the rest of my life,’ as she bit into a sloppy joe sandwich,” Loberg said. “The wheels just started turning, and a couple of months later, (we) opened the doors.”
Jarzynski recalled how the two were up until 3 a.m. talking about it.
They decided on a location in the Curve Shoppette, with its neighborhood feel and the affordable rent, Loberg said.
“We took our life savings, my little nest egg, her little nest egg,” she said, adding that they were a little nervous. “What if it didn’t work?”
There was plenty of trial and error at the beginning. Now, they’ve fine-tuned both the menu and their processes.
“We’ve got it down to a perfect science now,” she said.
Loberg has been in the restaurant business most of her adult life unlike her sister, who has done everything from nursing to printing.
As it turns out Jarzynski’s the one who works on recipes, Loberg said.
“She’s the cooker — I’m the yacker,” Loberg said.