Nebraska's ABC 13: Local Family Expands ‘Dickey’s’ Franchise in Tri-Cities

It’s been a busy day one at Dickey’s Barbecue as Richard Cochran opens store number two in Grand Island.

“We’ve had a lot of requests to get up here on this side of Grand Island. It’s kind of a long drive to our South Locust store,” says Richard, as customers trickled into the new North Webb Road location on Thursday.

“Fair folks and the fairgrounds support that South Locust store really well; we’re keeping that store open obviously. It was time to come up here on the northwest side,” he says.

The new restaurant will stay in the family, just as their Kearney location does.

“My youngest son runs the store for us over in Kearney, and my oldest son will run this one, and my wife and I will run the one down on South Locust,” Richard explains.

The Cochran sons say it’s a tasty legacy they’re proud of.

“It’s wonderful working together, that’s all I can say, you know, having a good big brother to look up to and a mom and dad that’s just provided us with a great job opportunity,” says David Cochran, who has been managing the Kearney location since November.

Andy Cochran, who will move from the South Locust store to the new one on Webb Road, says they’re hoping to pick up foot traffic they’ve been missing, and expand the catering side of the business. The growth is adding 15-20 new jobs in an area the family says has been good to them.

“Kearney and Grand Island has just been so wonderful to us, they really have, we really appreciate all they do for us, and in return we try to cook them the best barbecue we possibly can,” Richard says.

“It’s been real positive, you know, I do a lot of stuff with the schools and a lot of stuff with different charities here in town, so it’s fun to bring them along with us, and hopefully here shortly we’ll have a bunch of their pictures and posters hanging up on our big black walls back behind us,” says Andy.

As part of their grand opening weekend, the Cochrans say the Webb Road location will give 100 percent of all chip sales to the Boots and Badges charity on Friday, and on Sunday they say kids can eat free at all three stores.