This Fresno dance-party brunch keeps crowds lining up year after year. Check out why

You’re queued up on the sidewalk outside Kocky’s restaurant, waiting in mid-morning heat to get into Butta Brunch, and already there are hints of how the next few hours are going to play out.

There’s a red-carpet style backdrop set up as a photo op. It’s got the word “butta” in dripping yellow font next to Kocky’s cartoon rooster logo and a logo for DJ Kay Rich.

He emcees the reservation-only food party on Van Ness Avenue in downtown Fresno, and he’s already set up and working. When the door opens, music pours out at a level louder than you might think appropriate for a Sunday meal.

It’s the 1996 R&B hit “Return of the Mack.”

This is Butta Brunch, where “the energy is loud, the plates are stacked and the vibes are always undefeated,” to quote the restaurant’s social media.

The brunch runs in two sessions at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. with reservations required. It tends to sell out each week.

It’s the brainchild of Rich and San Hansen; they came up with the idea while at brunch at a restaurant in north Fresno.

There was a group at a nearby table playing music on their phones. They were singing along and dancing in their seats.

“The owners told them to turn it down,” says Hansen, the former marketing manager for the Fresno Grizzlies and the creative force behind annual //Fresno events like the Taco Truck Throwdown and the Notorious B.I.G.-themed Big Poppa’s Pop-up Cafe.

“They didn’t want that atmosphere.”

Butta Brunch leans into it.

Sing-alongs aren’t just encouraged, they’re almost mandatory. Rich is a longtime Fresno DJ and former radio personality who knows his crowds and curates the playlists accordingly.

He passes inflatable microphones around the tables and then puts on Mariah Carey.

When he drops the music mid-song, the crowd carries the words in unison, without missing a beat.

By the end of brunch, many of guests have abondoned their tables to make an impromptu dance floor in front the DJ. They are arms-up grooving.

Chicken and waffles and a towering mimosa

Of course, this is a brunch and that means food and drinks — and rule No. 1 for Butta Brunch is: You gotta have a mimosa.

It is the drink of choice; two mini bottles of champagne and 30 ounces of orange juice served in a two-foot tower that Kocky’s owner Michael Smith calls “world famous.”

There’s also a Hennessy version that adds in four shots.

But there’s also a traditional bloody mary (or Butta Mary), a red-beer michalada (they call it the Big Meech), plus Irish coffee and something the restaurant calls Came From Church. That’s scotch with orange liqueur, simple syrup and lemon juice with a sugar rim.

While the party gets going, the kitchen is busy cranking out a brunch-specific menu that includes the signature chicken and waffles, plus chicken fried steak (smothered in gravy and served with potatoes) and variety of breakfast skillet options (a hot-link scramble, for example).

For the sweet-toothed, there’s a churro waffle, french toast bites and waffle thicc sticks, which is pretty much what the name suggests.

A decade of Kocky’s in downtown Fresno

Kocky’s opened as a downtown dining option in 2011, taking over a space on Van Ness Avenue that housed the Smokehouse barbecue restaurant. Before that, it had been a comedy club.

It’s become a staple of the neighborhood, catering to the weekday work crowd with a daily happy hour from 3-6 p.m. On Saturdays, it hosts a 6-10 p.m. social hour with “old school throwback sounds and videos,” Smith says.

And Butta Brunch isn’t the only themed event Kocky’s is known for.

Last weekend, the restaurant celebrated its 14th anniversary with Positive Hennergy. The event, which has been running since 2017, is an ode to Hennessy, the French cognac that’s popular in hip-hop and Black culture.

There are limited run T-shirts and drink specials, all made with Hennessy of course.

Admission includes a shot of at the door and a posted notice: “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who doesn’t drink Hennessy.”

Smith admits that it took some convincing for him to get on board with the brunch culture concept. Plenty of restaurants have tried and not been successful. It was difficult to figure out the logistics of doing a brunch in a way that worked financially, he says.

The idea of breaking the party into sessions came from the old roller-skating rinks.

“When you go roller skating, you do sessions,” he says. Keeping it to once a week, with limited capacity of 120 guests, allows him to keep control of the numbers and have some predictability that seems to have worked out.

“We’ve been sold out for three years.”

This story was originally published August 16, 2025 at 5:30 AM.