Jimpa's by Catfish Jim

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Our Story is Growing

We have a long history, especially in Smyrna and Kennesaw. We started out as Uncle Bud’s Catfish, Chicken & Such in Smyrna on South Cobb Drive in the late 1980’s. It was more of a corporate run restaurant chain with 11 location around Georgia and Tennessee with the Smyrna location as the flagship store, all run by Jim “Catfish Jim” Schrampfer. By the 2000’s, the corporate guys had gone and Jim, with a partner, continued to run the Smyrna and Chattanooga locations. In 2005, Jim decided to scale down and closed the large Uncle Bud’s location to open a smaller, cozier version of his own design, thus Catfish Jim’s on Cobb Parkway was born. During this time, we started doing more and more catering on the side. When the lease was up in 2010, Jim decided to close the restaurant for good and only do catering. Jim wanted to rename the new venture so everyone would know that it was different than the restaurant. Several ideas were tossed around until we landed on JimPa’s Catering.

(When Jim became a granddad at 53, he didn’t feel he was old enough to be called a Granddad, Pepaw, or Pops...after some thought, he was soon lovingly called JimPa!)

JimPa’s Catering was an instant hit with our ability to cook fresh catfish and fried chicken on-site and serve it fresh to multiple shifts and job sites, factories and warehouses all over Georgia for customers like Georgia Power, Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Atlanta Falcons and many more. However, all of our loyal fans were devastated that they could no longer get their catfish fix. After overwhelming response, Jim decided to reopen a small take-out location for them in the Spring of 2011 located on Cobb Parkway a few miles north of Catfish Jim’s location. It was only open for dinner on Friday and Saturday nights allowing the fans to get their fix and time for us to do our caterings. Things were going great until Jim’s unexpected passing in August 2015. The fate of JimPa’s Catering was unknown. After much discussion, JimPa’s eldest son, Jason, decided to leave his 14 year career as a Graphic Designer to take over running JimPa’s.

The one new thing Jason was able to bring to JimPa’s was an online presence. Creating and maintaining a new website, Facebook, Google, and Yelp pages, we began to get traction with new customers and reconnecting with old customers that had lost us in the various moves. By late 2018, we realized we were going to need a bigger boat. We found our new home in the old Huddle House on the corner of McCullum Parkway and Cobb Parkway in Kennesaw. We reopened in October 2019 now offering lunch and dinner six days a week in our new, larger location. Now, no one could have predicted the 2020 pandemic, but we have been hanging in there and are still going strong. We aren’t planning on going anywhere and continue to serve our delicious made fresh-to-order Catfish, Fried Chicken, Jumbo Shrimp and Chicken Tenders...and of course our world famous Hushpuppies! SMALL PLACE WITH A BIG TASTE!