SOLON — Riverside Breakfast and BBQ is expanding its space after being open for only two months.

The all-day restaurant located at 201A Ferry Road on the Kennebec River opened in late May and has people traveling from Gardiner to Solon for the smoked meat and homemade meals.

The restaurant, about 50 yards away from the water, overlooks the riverbank at Evergreens Campground on the Kennebec Valley Trail.

“Most restaurants flip two and a half tables per night, on average, but we are flipping five to six per night we are open,” co-owner Scott Robertson said, referring to how fast the waitstaff are getting people in and out the door.

When the partners first leased the space, co-owners Robertson and Craig Meunier said campground officials asked if they could open in two weeks, and they scrambled to open the spot. They knew they wanted to offer fresh food in the way that they know how to prepare it best.

Robertson’s background includes working as a cook at the now-closed Butcher’s Choice in Fairfield and working at Griswald’s Country Store in Solon, formerly owned by his family, where he learned how to prepare breakfast in the best way he knows possible, with fresh, homemade ingredients. Meunier brings experience in making homemade marinades, meat rubs and an expertise in smoking meat from his time as a pit master at Smoke and Steel in Bangor.

“We pride ourselves on simple meats that are never frozen. We are staying away from the frozen stuff. Everything is made fresh daily,” Robertson said.

Meunier batters the chicken, makes the marinades from scratch and sometimes stays up until 1 a.m., long past the restaurant’s close, to smoke the meat.

Robertson daily prepares 10 pounds of family’s mac-and-cheese recipe, nearly selling out of it by the end of the day, he said.

In addition to breakfast, lunch and dinner, the restaurant has a full bar and drinks menu.

At the moment, the most popular item on the menu is the smoked sampler that comes with half a rib rack of baby back ribs, a chicken leg, smoked brisket, pulled pork, smoked sausage, a loaded baked potato and fries.

Meunier said that the meal can feed up to two people, but Robertson argues it can feed three or four.

“That’s been the big thing,” Meunier said. “Everyone wants to try a little bit of everything, and everyone loves it.”

Thanks to the high demand for their food, Meunier and Robertson are looking to expand after two months.

The restaurant seats 55 to 60 people, with more than half  the seats set up outside, and they employ about 12 people.

“We get a ton of ATV riders. We are right off the trail that connects Oakland to Bingham, so that’s been huge,” Robertson, who is also a trail master for the Kennebec Valley Trail, said. “We have markers on the trail saying where we are and we get groups of around 18 to 20 people, when groups of four to six are common.”

The bar expansion will bring the current bar from 10 seats to around 20 and nearly double the number of seats on the inside to help the restaurant stay open through the year and, maybe, as Robertson suggests, later in the evening on Sundays once football season starts for viewing parties.

“We are off the beaten path, but we know enough people and they are coming,” said Robertson.

Riverside Breakfast and BBQ is open from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. Thursday through Saturday and from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday.