LeBron James has opened a restaurant in the city that raised him. Buckets, a full-service comfort-food spot from the LeBron James Family Foundation, is now serving lunch and dinner inside House Three Thirty, the foundation's community hub on West Market Street in Akron, Ohio. The name plays on the buckets James spent a career scoring, and on the plating: much of the menu arrives in actual buckets.
The food is comfort food, done generously. Buckets of fried and roasted chicken anchor a menu that runs through collard greens, mac and cheese, burgers, sandwiches, custom salads, and wings with a long list of sauces. Ordering and hours live at buckets330.com, with service Wednesday through Saturday.
House Three Thirty is the point. The foundation renovated the building into a space for retail, arts, events, and gathering, an extension of the I PROMISE work James has funded in Akron for years. Buckets is woven into that mission: it staffs up with I PROMISE parents, students, teachers, and neighbors, turning a restaurant job into workforce training and steady income inside the community.
“The name is a nod to the buckets he scored. The mission is everything they get poured back into.”
Why it lands here: this is Black ownership used as infrastructure. A hometown kid who became the face of a sport put the restaurant where the need is, hired the people who live around it, and kept the returns in Akron. The chicken is the draw. The model is the story.
Editorial note
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