Bulrushes Cafe’s Weekly Veterans Breakfast: Served With A Side Of Friendship

PRINCE FREDERICK, Md. — Every Tuesday from 7 to 11 a.m., Bulrushes Cafe opens its doors to veterans for free breakfast and priceless conversation.

The Prince Frederick restaurant is tucked into a shopping plaza off Solomons Island Road. The nondescript brick exterior is the gateway to the rewards inside: a trendy cafe filled with conversation, clinking forks and a shared sense of gratitude.

Bulrushes Cafe opened its doors in November 2020. Owners Wendy and Bobby Bonner are locals — Bobby is a retired elevator mechanic and paramedic, and the couple’s kids are grown. General Manager Valerie “Val” Grogan said the cafe was Bobby’s dream and that he “outcooks her” all the time.

The dream wasn’t just about opening a restaurant, but was meant to fulfill a desire to give people a home away from home — a place where good food met a welcoming atmosphere and the ability to connect with others, whether it’s the staff who knows your order by heart or like-minded new friends.

So when local business owner SJ Johnson, of the propane company SJ Johnson Inc., suggested the veterans breakfast in 2021, it felt like a no-brainer. Johnson wanted to do something to give back to veterans in the community and sponsored the first year of the veterans breakfast on his own. Now, the breakfast has a rotating set of five sponsors.

Grogan said the idea took off from there. They started with a handful of veterans each Tuesday, and now it’s one of the busiest days of the week. She sees a lot of the same faces each Tuesday and says people return not just for the food but to see each other and the staff. Grogan knows the veterans’ regular orders, their names and their stories. Veterans dining called her both “a troublemaker” and “the best person I know.”

Attendees are mainly senior citizens — veterans of Korea and Vietnam — looking for community. Grogan says she’s seeing more young veterans starting to come to the breakfast. In previous years, they had a few World War II veterans. Serving them, Grogan says, brought tears to her eyes.

Michael Biggs and Donald Craun were finished with breakfast and chatting over the last of their coffee. They usually come in a bigger group, but today it was just the two of them. The pair had some overlap during their service and had mutual friends but say they didn’t get to know each other until they started coming to the breakfast.

“You can’t sell short how much everyone appreciates what these people are doing, and what the sponsors are doing. Even though I know they don’t want the recognition,” Biggs, a Navy veteran, said. “To have something like this is huge. We’ve got a lot of in-country Vietnam vets that saw combat. So getting to meet like-minded people who maybe have the same stuff going on — that’s extremely important. One of the best things that can happen is if you talk about things.”

Other diners included couples, parents bringing kids or grandkids along, and a group of siblings — all Army veterans — who sat at a high-top table sharing inside jokes and laughs.

“It’s not about the breakfast, really,” Biggs said. “The food is great, but it’s about the camaraderie. We’ve made a lot of friends here.”

The sense of gratitude is clear for both staff and patrons. Grogan’s heartfelt dedication to the cafe and the community drew a clear picture of what the breakfast means to people — even when she has to rein in Bobby Bonner’s enthusiastic ideas for expansion.

“We’re a family,” Grogan said. “This is where my heart is.”

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