Restaurants being reused as ... restaurants
Smart, Southern, independent start-ups are using the buildings and kitchens from closed chains and being green in the process.
Tue, Jun 02 2009 at 11:53 AM EST
Slash Food has an interesting piece on restaurants in the South that are being reused – as restaurants. Seems that many Waffle House and Huddle House restaurants have been closing and leaving their buildings unused but with the kitchens still intact. Independent restaurant start-ups that don’t have the cash to cook up kitchens from scratch are finding that these abandoned chain restaurants make for great new restaurants.Whether these new restaurants are meaning to be green or not, they are. They are reducing and reusing. Reducing the amount of new kitchen equipment that needs to be manufactured and reusing the perfectly good kitchen equipment left behind when the chain restaurants closed.
The type of food being served at the independent restaurants that are taking advantage of what’s already there varies, but one of the restaurants that Slash Food spoke about peaked my interest. It’s the Sugar Beet Café in Fairview, N.C.
"We wanted to utilize everything that was here and not strip everything out and replace it," Colleah Habif says of retrofitting a former Huddle House in Fairview, N.C.Sugar Beet, a bustling breakfast and lunch joint that makes good on its organic and seasonal promises, doesn't try to obscure its short-order origins.
The restaurant reuses what’s there and supports local and organic foods. I did a search for the restaurant and came upon the Western North Carolina Living Blog and found this review for the restaurant.
Sugar Beet, owned and operated locally, features breakfast and lunch. They offer eggs from free range hens, organic coffee and tea, local produce in season, meats from Hickory Nut Gap Farm in Fairview, breads from City Bakery and Boar's Head deli meats.
We need more start up restaurants like Sugar Beet, don’t you think?
Image: Grenade
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