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It’s called Original Chicken & Ribs
The Official Charlotte, NC Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Towlie
- Start date
I’m going to listen to you because you haven’t failed me yet. The person that told me they were good does not have a good track record when it comes to recommending food places lol. She’s 50/50. I never let her live it down for recommending Sal’s Pizza Factory on Monroe Road. I go in there and these fools are in there warming up already cooked pizza and giving it to people
I ate at Sal's and from what I remember neither the pizza nor the service was good
Bryan Danielson
Jmare007 x Bryan Danielson x JLova = King Ghidorah
Bryan Danielson
Jmare007 x Bryan Danielson x JLova = King Ghidorah
Man today my last day at my current job…… I so ready to go, but trynna get these hours in for my last check
Plus you know how it be with new jobs till you get in that payroll and hit their pay schedule.
But my next job I’m gonna get paid
God is Good
Plus you know how it be with new jobs till you get in that payroll and hit their pay schedule.
But my next job I’m gonna get paid
God is Good
How did you like it? I live so close to this place. I’ve had it a few times. It’s okay.
Bryan Danielson
Jmare007 x Bryan Danielson x JLova = King Ghidorah
I was out there last Sat.
I actually thought the pancakes were great!
Wasn’t crazy about the other thing I got which was scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns. If I go back, I’d definitely go back for the pancakes and I got this sampler jawn that was 3 pancakes but each one a different flavor.
So it was the Blueberry, the Sweet potato, and the Pineapple
All tree was banging
Also the style and vibe of the place….. I loved that….. it’s a chill spot to go to.
I can see woman going out there with thru girls on some girls brunch shyt since they serve alcohol.
Mimosas and shyt
BornStar
Marathon Continues
Snooze is great, plenty of brehs and brehettes eat there.
Try the sandwich I Am and the cinnamon pancakes
Also the water boys are in Charlotte around La Salle exit 12
Might be more merch based but there's a popup at Camp North End today.@Tribal Outkast @Pressure
@Bryan Danielson @Responsible Allen Iverson
Could any of y'all throw me a few mom/pop, independent eaterys and businesses to check for?
TRAP CITY: TRAP N SHOP STREET VENDOR FEST
The water boys? I like snooze okay. I make homemade pancakes and mine are better. Have yet to find a place that has better pancakes than mine.Snooze is great, plenty of brehs and brehettes eat there.
Try the sandwich I Am and the cinnamon pancakes
Also the water boys are in Charlotte around La Salle exit 12
y’all should check out J Capri gourmet
J Capri's (@jcaprigourmet) profile on Instagram • 2,939 posts
BornStar
Marathon Continues
Bryan Danielson
Jmare007 x Bryan Danielson x JLova = King Ghidorah
I’m out for GHOE this year.
My young Aggies wilding like fukk
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At Charlotte's Black-owned restaurants, pandemic challenges persist - Q City Metro
At Charlotte’s Black-owned restaurants, pandemic challenges persist
Owners say they continue to struggle with worker shortages, higher food prices and a loss of customers.
Sharon and Cliff Freshwater said getting customers to return since the Covid-19 pandemic has been a struggle. (Photo: Jalon Hill for QCity Metro)
By Jalon Hill
August 10, 2021
“Bear with me. I’ll be with you in a minute,” Sharon Freshwater, co-owner of Freshwaters Restaurant, said as new customers walked through the door.
As a pandemic-related labor shortage drags on, Freshwater and her husband, Cliff Freshwater, are working as a two-person staff to keep their business afloat. While Sharon serves customers in the dining room, her husband cooks food in the kitchen.
At Lulu’s Maryland Style Chicken and Seafood, known for its signature crab cakes, co-owner Joseph “Jay” Davis is wrestling with another pandemic-related problem — sporadic shortages of meat.
As the spread of Covid-19 enters a troubling new phase with the rise of the more contagious Delta variant, some of Charlotte’s most prominent Black-owned restaurants are still reeling from the fit wave of the pandemic.
In addition to struggling with food and labor shortages, some owners, like Sharon and Cliff Freshwater, said customers have been slow to return.
“It’s been a struggle,” Sharon Freshwater told QCity Metro during a recent interview. “We’re still working on getting people back out to the restaurant. We’re running specials, but it doesn’t seem to be working.”
Jay Davis and Miketa Proctor, co-owners of LuLu’s LuLu’s Maryland-Style Chicken and Seafood Restaurant. Photo: Alvin C. Jacobs
In late March, Datassentail, a Chicago research firm that tracks the food industry, reported that 10 percent of all U.S. restaurants had closed permanently since the pandemic began. That included restaurants at all levels of service — from fine dining to fast food.
Especially hard hit were food trucks, the company reported, noting that 22.5% of the mobile restaurants nationwide are now off the road.
In Charlotte, among the Black restaurant owners interviewed by QCity Metro, nearly all cited labor shortages as being among their top concerns.
Andarrio Johnson, owner of Cuzzo’s Cuisine, speculated that enhanced unemployment benefits may be to blame, an opinion shared by more than a few employers, economists and conservative politicians.
“A lot of people make more money off of unemployment, so they feel like they could stay home and make unemployment money instead of working,” Johnson said. “That was our problem.”
To blunt the economic impact of Covid-19, the U.S. Congress approved an aid package that included enhanced benefits for laid-off workers. Those benefits, which total an extra $300 a week, are set to expire Sept. 6.
In North Carolina, the minimum cash wage for workers who receive tips is $2.13 an hour.
One of Charlotte’s most noted Black-owned restaurants, Leah & Louise, announced in June that it would begin adding a 23% service charge to all bills as part of a larger plan to provide its workers with a livable wage.
Greg and Subrina Collier. Photo: Peter Taylor
“There’s been a lot of conversation about how to change the hospitality industry,” co-owner Greg Collier said in a statement when the service charge was announced. “We want to make sure our staff is treated as well as we treat our guests. We can’t be in the service industry and only serve ownership.”
At Bobbee O’s BBQ, the pain is less about staffing and more about the rising cost of meat, said Chloria Chandler, the restaurant’s marketing manager.
“In certain months, we had our sales slightly increase from the year before, then the food price doubled,” she said. “It’s just a situation like even when your numbers are good, they really weren’t.”
Chandler said that these food hikes affected sales, leading Bobbee O’s to raise the price on some of its menu items.
Roy Grant, co-owner and founder of Roy’s Kitchen and Patio, said economic problems brought on by the pandemic have caused “a lot of challenges.”
The Caribbean restaurant, which once opened at 11 a.m., has been forced to limit its hours because of worker shortages and higher operating costs. That also has meant more hands-on work for the owners.
“We try to work with what we have,” Grant said. “Some days we don’t open up until four o’clock in the evening because of the staff.”
That's funny reading this.
There's two restaurants listed that my distribution company serves in seafood here in Charlotte and it's become extremely complicated to get certain items out to market quick enough due to supplier side fukk ups.
The supply chain issues are very real and is getting WORSE..it's going to be interesting to see how long restaurants are able to hold up waiting for correction in the supply chain.
A couple's love of hip hop and healthy smoothies turned into a thriving business - Q City Metro
A couple’s love of hip hop and healthy smoothies turned into a thriving business
The Brooks wanted a business they could pass down to their kids. Now they're three years strong.
By Bethany Lane
August 22, 2021
takeOUTside is proudly presented by Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, our partner as we (safely) explore Charlotte-area restaurants, parks and green spaces.
“I got fiveee on it,” Roberto Brooks sang as he put the lid on an almond milk, peanut butter, banana, strawberry and honey smoothie.
“Sometimes he’ll sing when he hands customers their smoothies,” Shamika Brooks, his wife and business partner, said.
Together the couple own Hip-Hop Smoothies, which consists of a storefront in northwest Charlotte, a smoothie trailer and a food truck. Their entrepreneurship journey began with an auspicious start — in 2018 when Roberto was laid off from his corporate job. The Brooks saw this as an opportunity to create a business they could pass down to their children while simultaneously getting their kids involved in entrepreneurship.
Free Newsletter
Stay informed with news and events that impact Charlotte's Black communities.
Why Smoothies?
Roberto and their children always loved good smoothie, but Shamika wasn’t a fan because of the milky base. That’s when they decided to do some research and work on the recipes to create dairy-free smoothies that anyone could enjoy.
“We found out that most smoothie places didn’t use real fruit, and they added a lot of ice,” Shamika said. “In our smoothies, you get at least two cups of fruit, and we only have ice in one of our smoothies.”
Among their 13 varieties and two detox options, Shamika favors the Gin & Juice, which has peaches, mango, banana, orange juice, turmeric and ginger powder — but no alcohol.
The Vibe
“We both really love music. We love Jay Z, we love Biggie and Tupac, and we wanted to make it fun,” Shamika said when asked how the couple decided on the restaurant’s name and vibe. Hip hop is in every aspect of the business — from the art on the walls and floor done by local artists to the name of each smoothie, like Gangsta’s Paradise and Rapper’s Delight. There’s even a DJ booth that plays old-school hip hop all day long.
“We get every type of person in here, from people in their 80s to young kids,” Shamika said. “Our product goes with anybody. People just come in singing and rapping.”
What’s Next?
Since opening the smoothie trailer in 2018, the Brooks decided they’d do something different to add on to the business each year. So they a storefront in 2019 and a food truck in 2020.
So what now, in 2021?
“Overhead for storefronts are high, so we’d love to expand with trucks in different market areas like Florida, Georgia, maybe Myrtle Beach,” she said.
About Hip-Hop Smoothies
A couple’s love of hip hop and healthy smoothies turned into a thriving business
The Brooks wanted a business they could pass down to their kids. Now they're three years strong.
By Bethany Lane
August 22, 2021
takeOUTside is proudly presented by Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, our partner as we (safely) explore Charlotte-area restaurants, parks and green spaces.
“I got fiveee on it,” Roberto Brooks sang as he put the lid on an almond milk, peanut butter, banana, strawberry and honey smoothie.
“Sometimes he’ll sing when he hands customers their smoothies,” Shamika Brooks, his wife and business partner, said.
Together the couple own Hip-Hop Smoothies, which consists of a storefront in northwest Charlotte, a smoothie trailer and a food truck. Their entrepreneurship journey began with an auspicious start — in 2018 when Roberto was laid off from his corporate job. The Brooks saw this as an opportunity to create a business they could pass down to their children while simultaneously getting their kids involved in entrepreneurship.
Free Newsletter
Stay informed with news and events that impact Charlotte's Black communities.
Why Smoothies?
Roberto and their children always loved good smoothie, but Shamika wasn’t a fan because of the milky base. That’s when they decided to do some research and work on the recipes to create dairy-free smoothies that anyone could enjoy.
“We found out that most smoothie places didn’t use real fruit, and they added a lot of ice,” Shamika said. “In our smoothies, you get at least two cups of fruit, and we only have ice in one of our smoothies.”
Among their 13 varieties and two detox options, Shamika favors the Gin & Juice, which has peaches, mango, banana, orange juice, turmeric and ginger powder — but no alcohol.
The Vibe
“We both really love music. We love Jay Z, we love Biggie and Tupac, and we wanted to make it fun,” Shamika said when asked how the couple decided on the restaurant’s name and vibe. Hip hop is in every aspect of the business — from the art on the walls and floor done by local artists to the name of each smoothie, like Gangsta’s Paradise and Rapper’s Delight. There’s even a DJ booth that plays old-school hip hop all day long.
“We get every type of person in here, from people in their 80s to young kids,” Shamika said. “Our product goes with anybody. People just come in singing and rapping.”
What’s Next?
Since opening the smoothie trailer in 2018, the Brooks decided they’d do something different to add on to the business each year. So they a storefront in 2019 and a food truck in 2020.
So what now, in 2021?
“Overhead for storefronts are high, so we’d love to expand with trucks in different market areas like Florida, Georgia, maybe Myrtle Beach,” she said.
About Hip-Hop Smoothies
- Website: hiphopsmoothies.com
- Hours: Tuesday – Friday 11am-7pm; Saturday: 11-6pm
- Address: 249 Mt. Holly-Huntersville Road, Suite 210, Charlotte NC 28214
- Phone: 980-938-6702