CASE STUDY: RESILIENCE
New South Kitchen & Bar | Charlotte
SURVIVAL COOKING
COVID-19 has been brutal to the restaurant industry. But Chris Edwards and his wife, Sue, have kept their Charlotte eatery open with a positive outlook and a side of determination. hris Edwards and his wife, Sue, opened 90-seat New South Kitchen & Bar at Charlotte’s The Arboretum Shopping Center in 2007. Since opening their previous restaurant — Dakotas — in 1997, when the southern end of Providence Road was the Queen City’s outskirts, the couple has navigated twists and turns in the restaurant industry. But those paled in comparison to the challenges brought by COVID-19 last year. The pandemic has decimated the restaurant industry. It closed indoor dining for a time, slashed staffs and severed supply chains. Washington, D.C.-based National Restaurant Association estimated that nearly one in six U.S. restaurants — about 100,000 — closed during the pandemic’s first six months. When vaccines became widely available and dining rooms began reopening, many restaurant owners welcomed back hungry customers but struggled to reassemble their staff. The Edwardses are restaurant veterans, proficient at adjusting, rebranding and surviving. But the past 18 months tested those skills. “I do realize I’m in a very fortunate position,” Chris says. “A lot of restaurants got the [federal Paycheck Protection Program] money and had to use it to stay open, to stay in business. I was able to use it to make up shortcomings and have a great customer base. I’m very blessed. We kept making decisions and kept moving forward … . It’s not anything unique to us. It’s what the whole restaurant industry has been through the past year.”
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It’s nothing short of heroic what some people have done. We’re a huge part of the economy. -Chris Edwards
Dakotas was a high-end seafood and steak restaurant with tasting menus and formal ambience. “We had the fancy stuff, and it got fancier and fancier to where we were serving a $75 meal that took two-and-a-half hours to eat,” Chris says. “I don’t know that Dakotas would have survived the 2008 [Great Recession] with that price range and us not being downtown, at the downtown price point.” While New South occupies the same space as Dakotas, it’s something altogether different: a local gathering spot that serves Southern comfort food. “We were simply going to do a remodel, but when we got into the process, we realized we were changing more than we were keeping,” Chris says. “The beginning was not so well-received as far as taking our existing customers and adjusting to the challenge of a new basic clientele that was going to support us.” New South’s menu includes a few Dakotas dishes and plenty of new ones, including sandwiches, fried chicken and meatloaf. It has established a loyal customer base in a shopping center that grows busier by the day. “[It has] a huge amount of traffic but limited walkability,” Chris says. “People drive out there for a specific reason.”
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