Joni and Buddy McClain were married on the property now known as McClain Resort in 2007 when it was called Luckett Lodge. Now 12 years later, not only can a couple get married there, it has become one of the top attractions in Mississippi.
McClain Resort now has a general store, a zoo with more than 300 animals, a country style restaurant, a tavern, a steakhouse, a farmers market, a five bedroom guest house, 16 cabin rooms, gardens with various vegetables and fruits, a banquet hall, a chapel and a lake on its 2,000 acres of property on Holly Bush Road off of Highway 25 in Brandon.
The McClain’s, who are the founders and owners of McClain Resort, are Mississippi natives. Joni grew up in Meridian, Buddy in Houston. Now, McClain Resort is like home as they live near the property.
“We love this place,” Joni said. “After buying it in 2012, we often thought about having a place for people to eat. Buddy came up with the idea of a general store.”
“The general store was first, but then I wanted to a place to eat,” Buddy said. “Then a place to eat steaks. Then we had resort status so we wanted a tavern. Then I did my research and there were 22 churches in a 10-mile radius so the Sunday buffet was the right thing to do. So it kept growing and growing. Before you know it, we had 2,800 square feet of building here and people are telling us it’s not big enough.”
Buddy is no stranger to the restaurant business. He started working at Sonic at age 22 and four years later owned his first store. Forty years later, he owns 102 Sonics.
“The thing we are trying to accomplish is to be fresh food,” Buddy said. “In today’s environment, people put chemicals in food to make them last longer, to lay on the shelf longer. Hormones are put into meat. We wanted everything here to be fresh. When you get our peas, our butter beans, we want them to have the right ingredients. They didn’t come out of a tin can. We have our own honey, we have our own bee hives. We have our own cattle. We have 96 blueberry trees. So our blueberry muffins are from our blueberries. We know they don’t have chemicals in them. The older we get, the more we want to take care of our bodies. So we want to help you do that as best as you can by eating our fresh food.”
The McClain’s are in this “for the long term.” They plan on McClain Resort being here for decades. That’s why they use concrete at McClain Resort. But Buddy started using concrete years ago.
“My Sonic in Brandon just turned 30 years old,” Buddy said. “We poured concrete when we first purchased the store and we still have a good looking parking lot. We poured it right. We used concrete because it saves us money. I don’t have to spend money on fixing the parking lot. I can spend it on other things.
“We built a huge parking lot at McClain. We poured over 5,000 yards on concrete. We are in this for the long term and we knew to use concrete because it lasts a long time.”
One of the most popular attractions at McClain Resort is the safari tours, where adults and kids can see all of the animals and also feed them.
“We opened the safari tours on May 25, 2018,” Joni said. “We wanted to do it right. We built a wagon and we had tour times. It was a huge success and kept growing so we had to get more wagons and a tractor. We have about six or seven tours during the summer hours each day. And now we have started glow tours at night because of the demand. We can run about 220 people per time slot.”
The McClain husband-wife team works out well.
“The first thing we do in the mornings is talk about our personal life and then we have a board meeting between us and talk business,” Joni said. “I love how Buddy works with people. He’s a giver. His word is fact.”
“Joni and I are a perfect match,” Buddy said. “We are very much alike. We are both high energy people who wake up in the morning and want to make a difference in the world.”
That includes making a difference in their employees, customers and guests.
“We want to brand the name McClain, but it’s much more than that,” Joni said. “It’s all about working with people. We want to mentor people we work with and we can see growth in them in a few short months. Because of hard work and determination, a young child of 18 and 19 years old can move up into a position of leadership. We reward hard work. We call our employees family. It brings us great joy to provide them an opportunity to work and see them enjoy what they do.”
“We want to be like Disney,” Buddy said. “They do so many things right and make people feel good from the elderly to young kids. We want to do the same and appeal to everyone.”
Video Story: McClain Project
Architect: David Crumley – Crumley Architects, P.A.
Engineer: Mac Alford – Alford & Associates
Ready Mix Producer: Canton Concrete
Contractor: Joe Cauthen – McClain Resort
Written by Robert Wilson