How a jam at the Suez Canal delayed a Charlotte restaurant opening — and other tales
What does a shipping container in Egypt have to do with a restaurant in Charlotte? Turns out, more than you would think.
The Charlotte food scene has exploded in recent years — in 2022 alone, more than 140 new restaurants opened their doors, and more than 100 are on their way this year, too. But for every success story, there are disasters tackled behind the scenes that are beyond most of our wildest imaginations.
Remember in 2021, when one of the largest shipping containers ever built got stuck in the Suez Canal for six days, jamming up nearly $10 billion in trade a day? So does chef Sam Hart, who was opening the new Biblio wine bar and Counter- restaurant, which earned him a finalist spot for the James Beard Award’s Best Chef: Southeast.
“We ordered chairs that were coming in from Turkey, and they were on that shipping container that got stuck,” Hart said. It was not exactly a glitch he accounted for.
“My advice is to get anything you can in the U.S. — even if it is 20 or 30% more, it is worth it. Pay the extra money to get supplies, equipment, anything that is made in the United States.”
Delays and push backs are pretty commonplace when opening a restaurant, especially with the fallout of supply shortages that began during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sometimes it’s simple mistakes that can have big impacts.
Banh Mi Brothers co-owner Hau Doan had ordered 120 cases of subway tiles from Home Depot and was halfway through tiling the new restaurant he was opening with his brother, Luan, before realizing there had been a mistake.
“We started opening boxes and realized the tiles were different. They had given us two different white, beveled tiles, and the half we had put up was a more expensive tile than we had originally ordered,” Doan said. After some back and forth, Home Depot agreed to price match the remaining matching tiles, but the mix up still caused a delay as Doan and his team drove to four different locations around Charlotte to find enough boxes of the correct tile to finish the store.
[RELATED: Where to find the best banh mi sandwiches in the Charlotte area.]
From opening a restaurant ahead of schedule to enduring more than eight months of delays, we spoke to some local restaurant chefs and owners about their lessons learned and words of advice.
Get input from multiple people. You’ve heard the saying, “less is more” but when it comes to opening a restaurant, it seems more might actually be better. “Get quotes from multiple people. This goes for every aspect of opening — architects, builders, interior designers — get 3-4 of everything, so you have multiple eyes on each of these areas. It will give you a better idea of what the pressure points are so you aren’t having to deal with issues down the road,” Hart said.
Find an existing restaurant. “If you have to open up from scratch, you’ll spend an arm and a leg and maybe a kidney,” said Marco Brito, owner of Tex-a-lina BBQ Company in Denver, NC. Brito had been traveling the East Coast with his son and their barbecue food truck prior to discovering the perfect location to open a restaurant of his own. Old Daddy K’s restaurant — also a barbecue restaurant — had closed, and the space had been up for sale for several months, when Brito was able to eventually strike a deal he couldn’t refuse. “We got the funds together, pulled pennies from couches and made it work.” With the infrastructure already in place — including a fully equipped kitchen and smokers — Brito and his team were able to keep costs down and speed timelines up.
Shop local. As Hart learned from his Suez Canal experience, sometimes items that may seem less expensive actually end up costing more. “One thing we made sure of when we moved Counter-’s location is that every staff member was kept on salary and paid fully, even when we were closed for four months. So every extra day was really costly,” Hart said.
Do it yourself. When Brito and his son made the leap to turn Tex-a-lina into a standalone restaurant, they knew the only way to make it work was to get it open as soon as possible. That meant pulling in friends and family to get the job done. “We painted everything, did our own artwork, re-salvaged from the previous restaurant,” Brito said. The hands-on, teamwork mentality of Brito and his crew helped him to do the unthinkable in the restaurant business — open ahead of schedule.
Expect the unexpected. “We needed to add drainage in one spot to pass inspection so we rented a jack hammer — it seemed like a minor fix,” Doan said. “But because of the noise, and being located in a shopping center, we could only run the jackhammer at night.” This caused unanticipated delays. At Counter-, it was a toilet that was 1.5 inches too close to the wall that snowballed into a one week delay.
Think outside the box. Doan had considered opening a second Banh Mi Brothers location, but knew firsthand the time, expense and hassle that goes into opening a standalone restaurant. Instead, he opted to expand his business in a different way — by adding a food truck. With a commercial kitchen already in place, the greatest obstacle and expense of owning a food truck was eliminated. “There is no overhead to pay, and I have total control. I can choose which days I want to go out and if I don’t want to, I don’t have to,” said Doan. An added bonus? The exposure from the food truck is actually bringing new customers into the restaurant. “One couple that came by the food truck is now a loyal customer at the restaurant. If it wasn’t for the truck, they wouldn’t have even been exposed to us.”
Get mock inspectors. Having mock inspectors — either people who are very familiar with the process or specific restaurant consultants — come in and inspect the restaurant prior to the county inspections can help expedite the opening process. According to Hart, these individuals are often familiar with the minor nuances of inspection codes and can help point out things that may have been missed.
Double it. “However much something costs, double it. However long you think it’s going to take, double it,” said Scott Blackwood, owner of Firehawk Brewpub, which is opening in Mount Holly. Supply chain issues played a large part in Firehawk’s delayed opening. “We had electrical gear that we ordered in April showing up in January. Delivery dates on items that five years go would show up in two weeks and they were telling me five months. It was like a dog chasing its tail just being able to start.”
Make nice with your landlord. An undervalued expert tip — constantly communicate with your landlord. “Landlords can be the greatest people ever. No one ever says that, but building a positive, healthy relationship from the beginning can be invaluable. You never know ways they can assist you or who they are connected with,” Hart said.
Trust your gut. “My wife and I have a motto, and it’s “Hell Yeah” or “No.” That means when we are faced with a difficult decision we listen carefully to ourselves and only go with options that fire us up and make us have a strong “Hell Yeah” reaction,” said Scott Thorne, owner of OpenTap.
