Restaurant opening: Popular breakfast and lunch café expanding to Palm Beach Gardens

One of Jupiter’s most popular breakfast-and-lunch spots welcomed a twin café in Palm Beach Gardens on July 31. A new Berry Fresh Café, known for its hearty, scratch-made dishes and farm-fresh ingredients, made its debut at the Shoppes of Oakbrook on U.S. 1 at PGA Boulevard, .

The family-run café took over the space formerly occupied by Bonefish Grill.

“We’re excited. Palm Beach Gardens is a great market. We see a need for our breakfast concept there,” says owner Mitch Timoteo, who works alongside his son Michael in the daylight-café business launched by his late father, Tim Timoteo, in Port Saint Lucie in 2009.

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How is Berry Fresh’s concept different from any of the area breakfast restaurants? Timoteo says his café’s focus is spelled out in its name.

“The emphasis is on fresh. We have a truck and we go to the farms and bring back, say, 70 flats of strawberries. We do the same thing in peach season, drive to Georgia for fresh peaches. In blueberry season, we’ll go to Winter Haven,” says Timoteo, whose café has locations in Port Saint Lucie, Stuart and Jupiter.

Those details are important, says Timoteo, who displays many of them on Berry Fresh Café’s website: fresh pressed juices made daily, pancake syrup always served warm, French toast made with challah bread, stone-ground grits made with heavy cream, organic loose-leaf hot tea that’s brewed at the table, among other details.

“We make our own jam and our own apple butter. We even have homemade whipped cream. We try to go the extra mile,” says Timoteo.

With a full liquor license granted last year, Timoteo says Berry Fresh will continue to highlight its all-day brunch. The cocktail menu includes various types of mimosa, including the 22-ounce “Megamosa”, bloody marys, screwdrivers and vodka-spiked coffee drinks.

“We’ll have a fun brunch,” he says of the upcoming Gardens location.

From R.J. Gator's to Berry Fresh

Timoteo’s family has been in the restaurant business for decades. His father owned the R.J. Gator’s Florida Sea Grill and Bar family of restaurants, a now-defunct, Jupiter-based chain that came to include 23 locations in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and North Carolina.

Timoteo served as a company senior vice president during the time when mounting debt forced the family to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in 2007 and sell the company that year.

Two years later, Berry Fresh Café proved to be a fresh start for the Timoteo family.

“It was my father’s vision. Basically, he was in his late 60s and an experienced restaurateur, and no one would hire him,” says Timoteo, who opened the Jupiter location in 2012. The Stuart location, which recently earned a spot on Yelp’s “Top 100 Places to Eat in Florida” list, came three years later.

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He remembers the day when the daylight-café idea first came up.

“We were at a breakfast-lunch restaurant and he says to me, 'Wouldn’t it be great if we had a restaurant and we had these hours?’” Timoteo says.

It’s been a “good ride” indeed, he says.

Timoteo's father died in December 2022. By then, the family business included a third generation. Timoteo’s son Michael, who graduated from Florida State University’s college of hospitality in 2019, has been with the company for three years. He serves as head of operations for Berry Fresh Café locations, says Timoteo.

Timoteo recalls the day he opened the Jupiter location with mixed feelings. The place felt empty.

“I was having a panic attack,” he says.

But the place came to life, thanks to word of mouth, he says. Now, 11 years later, he’s hoping the same success will come to the Palm Beach Gardens location.

“We keep going,” he says, “one guest at a time.”

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Berry Fresh Café, Palm Beach Gardens

Palm Beach Gardens location: 11658 U.S. Hwy 1, space 18, in the Shoppes of Oakbrook (Publix-anchored) plaza at PGA Boulevard.

The family-owned café brand has locations in Jupiter (3755 Military Tr.), Stuart and Port Saint Lucie.

Hours: Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Sunday and Saturday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.For information and menus, visit BerryFresh.cafe.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Jupiter's Berry Fresh breakfast restaurant to open in Palm Beach Gardens