Smalls Sliders, the cheeseburger slider chain started by the founder of Walk-On's and backed by former Saints quarterback Drew Brees, now lists a West Palm Beach restaurant as opening soon at 8821 Southern Boulevard. It is the first Smalls in South Florida. Every other Florida location on the chain's own map sits in the Panhandle, Central Florida or the Jacksonville area.

Where it is, exactly

The address puts the restaurant on the busy western stretch of Southern Boulevard near Sansburys Way, well west of downtown, in an area that carries a West Palm Beach mailing address. That is the corridor residents of the western communities use every day to get to the airport, downtown and I-95, which is exactly the commuter traffic a quick slider stop is built for.

The chain's Florida directory shows how far south this is for the brand. Open Florida locations are in Fort Walton Beach, Pensacola, Tallahassee, St. Johns, Ocala, Clearwater, Lutz and Middleton. West Palm Beach is the only Palm Beach County entry, and it is the only one marked opening soon. The chain has not posted an opening date.

A restaurant that arrives in a box

The thing people notice first about a Smalls is the building. Each restaurant is a shipping container of roughly 800 square feet, painted a bright orange the company calls Smorange, and the company calls each unit a Can. According to a profile the chain republished on its own site, the Cans are built and inspected in a factory in Florida, then trucked to their sites and set down on an outparcel. The company says that process trims three to eight weeks off a typical restaurant build.

That has a practical meaning for anyone driving past Southern Boulevard. Once a Can shows up on a pad, the restaurant is close. Most of the building work happens before it arrives.

What is on the menu

The concept is deliberately narrow. The Smalls menu is built around a single item, the cheeseburger slider, sold in combos of two, three or four. There is a BBQ jalapeño version, a larger slider called the Biggie Smalls with or without bacon, seasoned waffle fries and a loaded version topped with queso. The house dipping sauce is called Smauce.

The drink side is hand-spun milkshakes in strawberry, vanilla, chocolate and cookies and cream, with rotating limited flavors. A Dr Pepper milkshake was the current special this week. Party packs and trays of sliders and fries cover the office lunch and team party crowd. The company says on its about page that nothing is held under a heat lamp and every order is cooked when it is placed.

The rewards program is simple too: a free slider on your second purchase and a free shake on your birthday.

Why the Brees name matters here

Smalls opened its first Can in Baton Rouge in September 2019, a short drive from the original Walk-On's. Founder Brandon Landry built Walk-On's into a national sports bar chain, and Brees has been his partner there since 2015. Brees was an initial investor and co-owner at Smalls from the start, and the company later moved its headquarters from Baton Rouge to Atlanta as it began franchising.

The growth since then has been fast. In a November 2025 announcement, the company said it had more than 375 Cans open or in development nationwide, and it signed a deal with a South Florida group called Stacked Hospitality for six Cans in Broward County, covering Fort Lauderdale, Pembroke Pines, Davie, Hollywood, Coral Springs and Pompano Beach. None of those have opened yet, which is why the Southern Boulevard Can is set to be the brand's first foothold anywhere on the Gold Coast.

What it means for the western suburbs

A slider-only shop that built its name across the South gives families in Wellington, Royal Palm Beach and the neighborhoods off Sansburys Way a new quick stop on the way home, and it gives West Palm Beach something the rest of South Florida does not have yet.

If the Can on Southern Boulevard follows the chain's usual pattern, the bright orange box will be hard to miss. When it is open, the first test is simple: order a three slider combo with waffle fries and a shake, and decide for yourself whether the hype that built this chain across the South holds up in Palm Beach County.