A pricey Charlotte menu is causing heartburn for some
I’m just a simple country boy from Goldsboro, North Carolina. I’ve eaten barbecue out of a Styrofoam container sitting on top of a 1996 Mazda Protege in a Walmart parking lot. I don’t know anything about COGS, retrofitting churches into restaurants, or equipment costs.
But something about a shrimp cocktail priced at $6 per shrimp just doesn’t sit right with my spirit.
That’s the case at Supperland, the much-hyped new restaurant in Plaza Midwood. Early in March, the restaurant’s menu was released and sparked a debate on their pricing. This included $13 wagyu frank and beans, $12 mashed potatoes, $16 for four cookies, and the aforementioned shrimp cocktail for six American dollars for each shrimp.
Contextually, it’s important to note this menu exists in the increasingly pricey Plaza Midwood neighborhood. When I moved to Charlotte 13 years ago and smoked American Spirits on the patio of Common Market, I never anticipated wagyu hot dogs would be served around the block.
Others felt similarly shocked, apparently. A Twitter post regarding the pricing received nearly 30,000 impressions and almost 5,000 engagements.
To be fair, owners Jamie Brown and Jeff Tonidandel pay their hourly staff well. Brown and Tonidandel told food writer Kathleen Purvis that hourly employees start at $12.37. This has been referred to as a “living wage,” although according to MIT, it is not.
Others pointed out that Supperland’s prices aren’t that much different from other restaurants.
In the undercurrent of many of the counter-arguments was the suggestion that Supperland was being unfairly picked on. Yes, the mean ol’ citizens of Charlotte were cyberbullying these innocent job creators for no reason. We all woke up, said our morning prayers, and then said to ourselves “Today, we will crush Supperland.”
Listen, nobody is personally mad at Brown and Tonidandel. No one is stopping Supperland or any of their other restaurants from making money hand over foot. The pricing debate is not about them. Supperland was just a brief main character in a much larger serial.
No, this debate is about something a little more esoteric.
It’s about southern food that your grandmother used to cook in a cozy house that will now probably be purchased by an online real estate company. They’ll paint it blue, put in an open kitchen, and resell it for $500,000. You’ll never be able to afford it, the property version of $13 frank and beans.
It’s about rising property costs forcing out a Dairy Queen where one could get a $2 ice cream cone for dessert. Supperland’s $16-for-four cookies came soon after.
It’s about the entire concept of “elevated southern,” which takes a tradition rooted with Native Americans and enslaved Africans and triples the price by selling it to white yuppies. It’s about doing this just a few yards away from Dish, a food pillar of Plaza Midwood still struggling in the Covid recovery. Dish sells mashed potatoes and mac and cheese for under $3. The same items will cost you $12 and $14 around the corner at Supperland.
It’s about people who grew up in east Charlotte being told that they can no longer afford to live there or eat there. It’s about the perpetual motion machine of media hype that causes restaurant owners to think more about impressing foodies than serving the neighborhoods they live in. Who’s really being bullied here?
How do we fix this? I have two ideas.
1) Supperland should donate food at the end of the night to Time Out Youth, or another east Charlotte community organization. Actively invest in the neighborhood you’ve joined.
2) Supperland is going to need to lower its prices. It’s for their own good. Plaza Midwood has shown itself to be arid soil for overpriced restaurants, or have we already forgotten the cautionary tale of Sushi Guru?
But maybe the detractors just don’t know what we’re talking about. Maybe we’re just a lot of simple country folks who don’t get it. Maybe this city will change and it won’t matter whether we like it or not.
And that’s fine. It just doesn’t sit right in our spirits.
Dion Beary writes about food and Charlotte.
