Small businesses that have given back to their communities in big ways are being showcased in the new season of a web series, “Small Business, Big Heart.” Chattanooga-based Zarzour’s Cafe, a family business with more than a 100-year legacy, is one of 14 businesses featured this season.
In Episode 5, Zarzour’s Cafe’s owner Joe “Dixie” Fuller discusses why he’s continued his grandfather’s legacy of using the restaurant as a drop-off location for people to donate food, blankets, coats and more to local homeless shelters within the community.
“Small Business, Big Heart” is produced by Deluxe, a $2 billion payments and business technology company, in partnership with Truist Financial Corporation. Each episode features Amanda Brinkman, chief brand and creative officer at Deluxe, and a Truist market executive in conversation with Truist clients, who are uniquely impacting their communities in positive ways.
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March 08, 2022 at 06:10AM
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Zarzour's Cafe To Be Featured In "Small Business, Big Heart" Series - The Chattanoogan
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takanadalagi.blogspot.com The rendering of Drift Café, to be located where Causeway Cafe and Gulfstream Restaurant once were at 114 Causeway Dr. in Wirghtville Beach. The owners are hoping for an April opening. (Courtesy Drift)
SOUTHEASTERN N.C. — Lots of movement happens around the Port City when it comes to restaurants, food trucks, bars and bottle shops, not to mention organizational and nonprofit foodie events and festivals. While Port City Daily already covers most of this news, “Small Bites” offers another way for readers to stay in the know.
Weekly, PCSB will unveil newsworthy tidbits, whethe rit’s smaller shifts and changes to local menus, or expansions of existing establishments, temporary closures and renovations, added hours or grand openings, pop-up events and, of course, openings and closings.
Gulfstream leaves WB, Drift Café to take over the space
From Causeway Café to Gulfstream, the iconic blue building at 114 Causeway Dr. in Wrightsville Beach will undergo renovations over the next eight weeks. The owners of Drift Coffee + Kitchen have taken over the restaurant to launch their first expanded restaurant concept, Drift Café.
Ben and Michael Powell opened the first Drift Coffee + Kitchen in Ocean Isle Beach in 2014 before extending into Wilmington in 2018, with shop number two at Autumn Hall. In 2019, they opened in Mayfaire as well.
“We didn’t expect to be expanding so quickly,” Powell said. “But we have really been lucky.”
Ed Thomas announced at the end of February that Gulfstream Restaurant — founded on Pleasure Island 43 years ago, which Thomas purchased in 2014 — would consolidate operations. Thomas and managing partner Rich Johnson took over the former Causeway Café location in July 2019.
Though steady at the onset, operations weren’t always easy. They endured Hurricane Dorian in September 2019 and thereafter went into the down season. Thomas said, they were gearing up for a solid tourist season in spring 2020 when Covid-19 hit and shuttered Gulfstream WB through June 2020.
“We had a decent summer that year,” Thomas said, noting most of his Wrightsville Beach staff returned. Seating was reduced per Covid-19 protocols, but he made due with outdoor dining and coasted through winter. Then, last spring, he started losing staff.
“And we couldn’t keep up,” Thomas said. “It’s not like our Carolina Beach location; I’ve got servers that have worked there for over 25 years. I’ve had a harder time finding cooks.”
Also, his Wrightsville Beach managing partner got married and decided to make a career change. A 30-year restaurant veteran, Thomas took on both operations solo. Despite matching higher pay to compete with other restaurants — “a $3 an hour difference or more” — he said he couldn’t find lasting help, nor a manager to fill the exit of Johnson.
Thomas said he made the decision to close Wrightsville Beach for the winter in November 2021, with the intention to reopen by this spring. However, running two restaurants as the sole partner during the downtime was taxing. At full speed, he knew he would be spread too thin, he said — not to mention food shortages and increased prices adding to the adversities of the business.
“My food cost is probably up 8% to 10%; labor’s up 20%. Restaurant margins typically run between 6% and 20%, depending on what kind of operation you run,” he said. “I just had to make a decision to coordinate my resources.”
Thomas decided to put the Wrightsville business on the market at the beginning of the year.
The timing was kismet for the Powells. They had begun shifting plans for Drift, to offer an elevated version of the coffee shop, already known for serving a variety of java drinks and breakfast and lunch bowls.
“There are a lot of traditional diners in town,” Ben said. “We want to create a modern, lively café atmosphere at Wrightsville.”
Surfers, the Powell brothers said their Drift concept originated from travels to Australia and South Africa, where spaces felt more communal — lots of interaction with more
face-to-face conviviality.
“We want Drift Cafe to be a place where people feel taken care of — a social, engaging place,” Michael said. “And we knew we wanted our first full-scale restaurant to be on the beach because there’s not a sit down breakfast place right now that I know of open on Wrighstville. There’s a lot of coffee — a ton of coffee.”
Unlike the coffee shop, Drift Cafe will offer tableside service for breakfast and lunch, both indoors and outdoors. The brothers are still hashing out details on the menu, but Ben said the food will continue to have Drift’s thoughtful, fresh appeal. The menu will include some of their standards, like loaded avocado toast, and also larger plates including Benedicts.
Drift’s coffee drinks will be served, but the restaurant will have a limited alcohol menu, mimosas included.
“It’s a larger undertaking to manage a team of 30 to 40 people versus a team of 20,” Michael said, “We want to continue to grow with Drift, but in a controlled way.”
The Drift team is looking for an April opening, if all goes according to plan. Currently, they’re hiring and have open interviews for all staff planned for Thursday, Mar. 10, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Thomas said Gulfstream in Carolina Beach will stay put. He cut back dinner hours at the Pleasure Island staple last year; however, with his attention fully focused on the flagship operation, dinner will come back with tourist season.
“I love the business and the clientele,” Thomas said. “We have people that have come in there for 30 or 40 years, have brought their kids, their grandkids. It’s just unique to Carolina Beach.”
Burney’s Sweets and More will be coming to Waterford in Leland.Burney’s Sweets and More headed to Leland
Leland will get a touch sweeter as Burney’s Sweets and More has put up a sign that a location will be headed to Waterford. No word on the official opening date, but the sign is hanging at 503 Old Waterford Way, Ste. 105.
A family-owned operation, Burney’s is known for its fried, sweet croissants, glazed plain or coated in powdered sugar. It also offers dozens of stuffed varieties, filled with creams and fruit spreads, from chocolate to Bavarian cream, raspberry to blueberry.
The bakery also serves 15-layer cakes, cheesecakes and cupcakes. While sweets are the bread and butter, so to speak, the bakery also has savory options, like leek and parmesan or tomato-olive-basil pasties.
Burney’s was founded an hour west in Elizabethtown a decade ago. It has 11 franchised operations across the state, including locations in Hampstead and Southport. It opened its first location in Wilmington at Mayfaire Town Center in 2020.
Port City Daily reached out to the restaurant about an opening day but hasn’t heard back. This article will be updated when and if a representative responds.
Rx temporarily closed
Sarah and James Doss have announced the temporary closure of Rx Restaurant on Castle Street. Its last service was held Sunday, Feb. 27, and will reopen in a few months.
The Dosses will be making renovations, Sarah confirmed. According to the restaurant’s social media post, it is also preparing for a new chapter. Though, details have yet to be released.
Since opening in 2012, Rx has become known for creating elevated Southern cuisine, with fresh, local ingredients.
“One of the things we’ve been proudest to see is that now so many of you personally know and support our local organic and sustainable farmers and fishermen, who have always been the true rockstars and the reason for what we do,” the Dosses shared on Facebook.
During the last two years of Covid-19, the restaurant closed operations numerous times to protect their staff and customers — many times before restrictions mandated it. The Dosses shifted Rx with the needs of the community, offering family meal packages when people weren’t dining out.
It even expanded the restaurant’s blueprint, adding a covered patio, constructed by Old School Rebuilders of Wilmington, and outfitted with greenery and an art installation by Michael Van Hout. The addition almost doubled the restaurant’s seating capacity, at a time when required social distancing often decreased the amount of covers a restaurant would do in a night.
The Dosses expect to reopen Rx by late spring or early summer.
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March 06, 2022 at 04:04AM
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Port City Small Bites: Drift Café to open in WB, Burney's heads to Leland - Port City Daily
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False spring has arrived in Chicago, and that means it’s time to put on those shorts, fire up the backyard grill and hang out on sidewalk cafes.
Technically, for customers who can stand the cold, sidewalk cafe season has been every season since May 2, 2019, when former Mayor Rahm Emanuel allowed the city’s food establishments to do business on sidewalks year-round through his small business reforms package. Before then, businesses could only operate sidewalk cafes from March 1 to Dec. 1.
Restaurants, bars and coffee shops must apply for these permits every year through the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP). Of the 188 operational permits, one out of five belongs to a business on North Wells Street, North Clark Street, North Division Street or North Milwaukee Avenue, according to a WBEZ analysis of the data.
The 42nd Ward, which includes most of downtown and River North, has the highest number of sidewalk cafe permits. The second-highest permit-holding ward is the 27th Ward, which stretches from Greektown to East Garfield Park, with 24 sidewalk cafe permits.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the BACP also made it cheaper and faster to obtain a sidewalk cafe permit. They slashed the permit application fee by 75%, expedited the issuance process and allowed restaurants to extend their sidewalk permits to neighboring properties.
Businesses can also apply for the city’s expanded outdoor dining program, which allows retail food establishments to temporarily expand into the public way and other private property, like parking lots, for outdoor dining and drinking.
Much like sidewalk cafe permits, these special outdoor dining permits are also concentrated on the North Side. However, the 29th Ward on the Far West Side holds the third-highest number, with 10 permits along North Harlem Avenue, West Chicago Avenue and West Madison Street.
So put on those shorts, enjoy the (potentially short-lived) sunshine this weekend and grab a bite outside.
Jane Vaughan contributed to this report.
Charmaine Runes is WBEZ’s data/visuals reporter. Follow her@maerunes. Jane Vaughan is a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and contributed Freedom of Information Act research to this story as part of a Media Law & Government Transparency Practicum. Follow her@jvaughan124.
Brooks Kirchheimer holds a coffee mug christened with the logo of Hill’s Kitchen Cafe and Catering, an expansion of Hearth and Hill, the restaurant he co-founded with his father. Hill’s Kitchen features a grab-and-go menu, coffee bar and pastries that are freshly made each morning. David Jackson/Park Record
Hearth and Hill has added another Hill to its restaurant family.
Brooks Kirchheimer, who cofounded Hearth and Hill with his father David, cut the ribbon of the newly christened Hill’s Kitchen Cafe and Catering, at 1153 Center Drive, on March 1.
The space, measuring 2,600 square feet, features a full pastry kitchen and a catering area for up to 500 people, Kirchheimer said.
“The pastry kitchen will offer 12 to 20 different pastries every day, and they will all be made in-house each morning by our talented pastry chef, Jessie Rae Nakoneczny,” he said. “Part of the idea of Hill’s Kitchen was to provide a space where she could really spread her wings and showcase her talents. Jessie Rae has been with us since day one, and we’re excited to have her as our executive pastry chef.”
The cafe will also offer a full coffee bar, juices, teas and smoothies, and a full grab-and-go menu of sandwiches, salads, burritos and breakfast parfaits, Kirchheimer said.
“We have limited seating and seven tables, so people can come and hang out, meet friends or have meetings,” he said. “But we do expect a majority of businesses will be grab-and-go.”
Staff at Hill’s Kitchen Cafe and Catering, a satellite outpost of the Hearth and Hill restaurant, prepare items from a new grab-and-go menu. Hill’s Kitchen also offers a full coffee bar and fresh pastries made every morning. David Jackson/Park Record
The new space is designed by FFKR Architects to give the public a chance to see how much work Nakoneczny and the catering team invests in creating different culinary offerings, according to Kirchheimer.
“We are big believers that people in today’s society are more invested in seeing how the product is made than ever before,” he said. “I know people love to watch ‘The Great British Baking Show,’ and we wanted people to see Jessie Rae make muffins or a wedding cake and cookies right in front of their eyes.”
Hill’s Kitchen will also be run under the same philosophy as its parent restaurant Hearth and Hill when it comes to locally sourced ingredients and sustainability, Kirchheimer said.
“The pandemic opened everybody’s eyes that restaurants impact so many people on a daily basis, and we realized that local farmers had struggled to stay alive during that time,” he said. “So we made sure that we could support them as much as we can.”
Some of Hill’s Kitchen purveyors include Ranui Gardens, Red Bicycle Breadworks and Park City Creamery, Kirchheimer said.
“We will also sell some local honey and olive oil, and Ritual Chocolate will sell some of their bars here,” he said.
Hill’s Kitchen has also partnered with Publik Coffee and Tea Zaanti.
“We feel we’re only as successful as our farmers and purveyors, because we need each other to be successful,” Kirchheimer said. “We want to help each other with everything we do.”
Kirchheimer has tossed around the idea for Hill’s Kitchen since Hearth and Hill opened a little more than three years ago.
“Our goal from day one has always been to grow, because that allows us to provide more opportunities for our associates and growth opportunities to our management team,” he said. “From a buying standpoint it also gives us more power in the market.”
Sandwiches and burritos are a couple of the items on Hill’s Kitchen’s grab-and-go menu. David Jackson/Park Record
Growth also allows Kirchheimer and his crew to immerse themselves in the greater Park City community.
“We have continued to work with local nonprofits, and we don’t have the room, anymore, to produce large community events out of Hearth and Hil,” he said. “So, we wanted another space designated to do that.”
Hill’s Kitchen is Kirchheimer’s first step of a three-restaurant expansion plan that will run through 2023, he said.
He plans on building two new restaurants in Salt Lake City — the chef-driven Urban Hill in the Post District, and a second Hearth and Hill, in the Sugar House area.
These projects will fall under the umbrella company, Leave Room for Dessert Eateries, which Kirchheimer and his family established a few weeks ago.
“We wanted to give the whole group a little more identity, but we didn’t want just a traditional name like the Brooks Restaurant Group,” he said. “We wanted something that would represent who we are. We wanted something that was a little quirky, because we’re quirky.”
Kirchheimer felt the Leave Room for Desserts name fit his family.
“We have always been huge with desserts when I was growing up,” he said. “We would always have pints and pints of ice cream in our freezer. It’s a fun name that represents who we are as people and a family.”
Hill’s Kitchen will offer pastries that are hand made every morning by pastry chef Jessie Rae Nakoneczny. David Jackson/Park Record
Hill’s Kitchen will be open from 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, and Kirchheimer is working on setting up online ordering and a mobile app.
“We want to make things as easy as possible for people who are dropping off their kids at school or heading into the office,” he said. “They will be able to order online, come grab their orders and enjoy delicious food in a timely manner.”
Gran Turismo 7 features a more traditional single-player mode than the previous installment, Gran Turismo Sport, exclusively focusing on online multiplayer competition. The game revolves around a world map allowing you to access a variety of activities, and hubs where you can buy new and used cars, upgrade them, and so on.
As you might have read in our Gran Turismo 7 review, GT Café stands out above all. It’s a quite classic campaign, unlocking challenges based on certain car brands and certain tracks, and in the meantime illustrating the technicalities behind a class of vehicles and the history of a brand. The mode is based on Menu Books, like a real Café – but how many of these menus are there in the game, and how long does it take to beat GT Café?
How long to beat Gran Turismo 7
It takes just under 30 hours to complete the GT Café mode. In our playthrough, we played all the GT Café events, plus the driving licenses required to get to the end credits and all the events included in the first two Missions, in about 28 hours.
Considering how many licenses (up to S), how many Missions and how many events are still available after completing GT Café, that gives you a good idea of how robust the single-player element of Gran Turismo 7 is – and how Polyphony Digital made sure to work on all the feedback gathered after releasing GT Sport.
How many Menu Books are there in GT Café?
If you are playing the GT Café mode and want to know how many Menu Books there are, there’s good news for you – there are a lot. Overall, Gran Turismo 7 includes 39 menus to play through, with events and cutscenes providing more details on car categories and car manufacturers.
The last three events are probably the best ones: Menu 37 allows you to unlock Gran Turismo 7’s fastest cars for rally racing, Menu Book 38 will be entirely dedicated to Ferraris, while Menu Book 39 is totally focused on a great final tournament. At the end of this tournament, you will be shown actual credits, like in a single-player story-based game.
After serving French Quarter diners through one last Mardi Gras, 17-year old restaurant Cafe Amelie has closed its courtyard (and doors), for good, effective immediately. The restaurant closed earlier this week, Cafe Amelie owners and employees confirmed to Eater, and patrons with upcoming reservations have been notified of the closure via text message over the last few days.
Cafe Amelie has served modern Southern American-Louisiana cuisine at the 150-year old Princess of Monaco Courtyard and Carriage House on Royal Street since 2005 — the restaurant opened just a few months before Hurricane Katrina, founded by Susan Hoffman, chef Jerry Mixon, and Mixon’s partner Danny Akers. It was a hit from the start with both locals and tourists, which helped it rebound relatively quickly in the hurricane’s aftermath, becoming a destination in large part due to its lush, secluded patio. Mixon, who worked with the legendary Paul Prudhomme at K-Paul’s for a time, ran the restaurant along with Akers, who served as general manager, from 2005 until 2020. The couple left that summer to open Mid City restaurant Trep’s with Sidney Torres, a notorious local developer and entrepreneur. “Chef Jerry,” as he was known at Cafe Amelie, helped make the restaurant a destination for Gulf shrimp and grits, brunch, and a strong wine list.
The restaurant faced specific challenges at the onset of the pandemic, given its tourist-centric location in the Quarter and dine-in only menu. Cafe Amelie introduced takeout for the first time ever in Spring 2020 when in-person dining was prohibited in New Orleans, resuming outdoor dining when local restrictions allowed shortly after. After taking its annual summer break in 2020, it reopened in September with a new chef at the helm, former Apolline chef Michael Shelton.
Eater has asked Cafe Amelie for more information on the closure and will update this if we hear back; the restaurant said an announcement was forthcoming.
UPDATE: March 4, 2022, 10:14 a.m.: Cafe Amelie’s announcement is below; regarding future plans, the post says, “The owners of Cafe Amelie plan to relocate with a new team.”
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March 04, 2022 at 09:06PM
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Cafe Amelie, a French Quarter Standby Famed for Its Courtyard, Closes After 17 Years - Eater New Orleans
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