Employees chat with customers after the lunch rush.

A nondescript building just off 18th Street and Herring Avenue houses one of Waco’s favorite burger joints, Dubl-R.

Nobody will ever mistake this for a fancy restaurant. In fact, if you blink, you might miss it. But those who flock to the establishment are hankering for a slice of Americana. Customers want an old-fashioned hamburger with a wide array of topping choices, and simple side dishes such a fries and onion rings.

Owner Perry Weaver has been running the eatery since 1996. In fact, he recalls the day when talked his dad, Sam Weaver Jr., into helping him purchase the eatery.

“It was Feb. 29, 1996,” he said. Perry was attending McLennan Community College and thought running Dubl-R might be a golden opportunity.

Those early days were difficult, he recalled.

Perry Weaver measures patties behind the scenes.
Photo by Jose Yau

“I was working 70- and 80-hour weeks, and that’s one thing when your 22, but quite another when you’re looking ahead to 52,” Perry said. “So I put my nose to the grindstone and finally finished (college) in December 2002.”

He grew up in Waco, and attended Waco Christian Academy and Waco High School, graduating from Waco High in 1992.

Perry majored in history at Baylor University.

“That and $1.25 will buy you a Coke,” he quipped. But he said he’s glad he earned his degree.

The burger business he owns has thrived. It has allowed him to hire more people to share the workload and reduce the hours he spends at the restaurant himself.

One of the people who has been with Dubl-R since Perry first took is David Maddison. David is a manager and co-owner with Weaver in their concessions business. Dubl-R provides concessions for Riverbend Ballpark, and also has the naming rights to the baseball and softball fields at Riverbend.

All of that is a testament to the restaurant’s success.

“We’ve been fortunate,” Perry said. “This place has grown and prospered and done pretty well. I stay busy, but I’m not nearly as active here as I was 10 years ago.”

He said a highlight of the business is meeting people.

“I’ve met a lot of people and made a lot of friends I wouldn’t have otherwise,” Perry said.

He said he’s been fortunate that the restaurant often is able to keep its employees for extended periods.

“We’ve been fortunate that we have very little turnover, especially for the restaurant business,” Perry said. “We have a laid-back atmosphere as long as they get the job done.”

The 1,000-square-foot eatery is likely to be very crowded at lunchtime, but employees offer conversation on a variety of topics while customers wait. David is often quick to offer his opinions on numerous subjects.

License plates from several states decorate the small building.
Photo by Jose Yau

“I’m usually the quiet one, but David is very much the social butterfly,” Perry said. “He has a strong opinion on lots of things, and he has no problem sharing it with you.”

Perry said a strength of the restaurant is knowing what the customer wants and delivering it with consistency.

“We’ve changed very little over the years, other than adding a chicken sandwich,” he said. “We serve up really good burgers, and we don’t try to be something we’re not. We’re a greasy, hole-in-the-wall burger joint.”

One of Dubl-R’s specialities won’t be found on the menu.

“We have an R&R burger that was concocted by a group of guys from Raytheon (now L-3, one of Waco’s largest employers),” Perry said. “They basically started imagining what they’d do in coming up with their own burger.”

The result is a double-meat, double-cheese burger that also features ham, bacon, onion rings, grilled onions and jalapenos. It’s one of the more expensive items on the menu, but definitely a memorable one.

The biggest burger is the 4x4, with four meat patties and four slices of cheese.

“The employees used to offer a deal where they’d give people a second one free if they could finish it,” Perry said. “I don’t think they do that much anymore, because it got a little expensive for them. But they’d get a big kick out of seeing people you wouldn’t expect to eat one. Sometimes it would be a dainty girl, other times a little kid.”

Double cheeseburgers are a specialty of the restaurant.
Photo by Jose Yau

He said they have one customer who sometimes orders the 4x4 with bacon. Halfway through his meal, complete with fries, he orders another, Perry said.

“They have to give him a bottle of mustard because they’re never able to add enough for him,” he said. “And this is an average-sized guy.”

Dubl-R also offers vanilla, chocolate and strawberry shakes.

“We like to keep it simple,” Perry said. “I’m of the opinion that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.”

The restaurant’s best-seller is the cheeseburger basket, which comes with fries and a drink.

Perry said his favorite is the double-double (two hamburger patties and two slices of cheese).

“It’s a little more than I should eat, but not too much,” he said.

Perry’s dad retired from the insurance business and helps out on occasion at the restaurant.

“He really enjoys it,” Perry said. “I think he wishes he’d gotten into it when he was a little younger. I’m really thankful that he put the faith in me to buy this place. I guess we got lucky.”

Perry’s history degree has served him well in at least one area. The subject has always intrigued him.

“I’m a big history buff,” he said. “As a kid, I really enjoyed World War II stuff. My grandfather (Wade Chandler) was in an engineering outfit in the Army during the war. He’d tell me horrible stories about the South Pacific, although he didn’t really want to talk about it much. I know he was injured by shrapnel in one battle and earned a Purple Heart.”

Perry said his grandfather also caught malaria during the war, and as a result “there’s three weeks of his life he doesn’t remember.”

His grandfather was actually drafted before Pearl Harbor was bombed.

“He was still stateside (on Dec. 7, 1941), but was transported to Hawaii afterward,” Perry’s said. His grandfather told him the only time he went snow skiing was on a mountaintop in Hawaii.

Customers enjoy a visit to Dubl-R Burgers.
Photo by Jose Yau

Perry remembers road trips to historical places as a child. As an adult, he travels to Colorado a few times a year and has seen all the historical sights along the way.

As for his hobbies?

“I own an old house and I’m a bit of a gear head,” he said. “I love to work on old cars and ride my motorcycle, when it’s running. I also almost always have my nose in an old book.”

Considering his work at the restaurant, that’s plenty to keep Perry busy.

Dubl-R has only one location, but for a short time, there were two.

“We briefly had a location down by (the Baylor) campus but it didn’t work out,” he said. “We’re better off as a stand-alone kind of place. We have a core group of regulars who’ve been coming here for years.”

Perry said the strength of Dubl-R is in the staff, the customers, the location and the character of the building.

“That’s something that’s not easily duplicated,” he said.