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This is a sampling of stories from the Business Journal’s weekly Restaurant Roundup email. Subscribe at wilmingtonbiz.com.

Multiple restaurant owner closes Bone & Bean BBQ

James Smith, owner of Bone & Bean BBQ, announced via Facebook on Nov. 20 that he would be closing the Carolina Beach Road restaurant on Nov. 28, calling it the most difficult post he’s had to make in his business career.

Smith, who owns the downtown and Carolina Beach locations of Fork n Cork as well as Smoke on the Water in Riverlights, took over the restaurant three-and-a-half years ago after founders and fellow Texas natives, Pam and Chris Valverde, put the business up for sale.

Smith carried much of what the Valverdes had on their original menu, including brisket, pulled pork, smoked turkey breast and smoked chicken wings. He added St. Louis-style ribs and baby back ribs to the menu and gained a loyal following with dishes such as short ribs and chicken-fried ribeye.

But despite that, Smith said the location had always been an issue, and it just didn’t get the flow of traffic necessary to stay in business.

Gregory Farms decides to launch own wine label

In 1987, Paul and Martha Gregory bought a 113-acre blueberry farm in Currie, about a 15-minute drive from Wilmington.

Over the years they not only grew blueberries but with the growth of their family, the farm grew to 251 acres, ponds were dug and an old tobacco barn was relocated and restored into living quarters. Gregory Farms became a place for family and friends to gather.

In 2012, Paul Gregory died at the age of 89, but the farm stayed in the family. His son Alan and his wife, Pam, bought the farm from the family estate in 2016 and began revitalizing it.

Now the couple has partnered with another muscadine grower in Smithfield, as well as a vineyard and winemaker in Lexington, to produce wine under the Gregory Farms Vineyard label.

The label includes several wines, three muscadines, a sangria, a rosé, a chardonnay, a merlot, a traditional cabernet and a double-barrel cabernet aged for 10 months in oak barrels and an additional six months in Jack Daniel’s barrels. Wines range from $14 to $26 a bottle.

The Blind Elephant owner partners on mobile bar

Ashley Tipper, owner of The Blind Elephant, partnered with longtime bar manager Cabell Bryan to launch Vagabond Spirits Mobile Bar, specializing in customizable curbside cocktails for private events.

Tipper embarked on this offshoot of The Blind Elephant last November when she purchased a camper to refurbish as a mobile bar. Tipper said she had a surplus of income from last year which she wanted to reinvest back into the business. The process of refurbishing the camper ended up taking months longer than expected, but it is now up and running and the team is currently booking dates through the holidays and beyond. - Jessica Maurer

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| BUSINESS OF LIFE |

Cape Fear Seafood forges its own path

BY SCOTT NUNN

For people of a certain age who grew up in the Wilmington area, going out to eat seafood meant a trip to Faircloth’s or one of the old fish camps like Potter’s, Gore’s and Holland’s Shelter. The settings were laid-back, even homey, and menus were pretty much limited to Calabash-style fried fish, shrimp and oysters. Well before the days of “liquor-by-the-drink,” beverages of choice were sweet tea, Pepsi in glass bottles and hot coffee.

Evans Trawick remembers those days well. When the Burgaw native decided to upgrade from the sandwich-shop business (he owned a Priddyboy’s franchise) to a traditional full-service restaurant, he thought about those once ubiquitous local seafood places.

“There really weren’t any kind of go-to places in Wilmington at the time to eat seafood,” Trawick said recently. “I felt like there was a niche in the market that needed to be filled, so that’s kind of what I went after.”

At the same time, however, Trawick didn’t want to limit his new venture to the fried fare and sides of coleslaw and fries. To be clear, those are popular staples that locals still love, including Trawick. But he wanted to offer more.

So when he opened Cape Fear Seafood Company at Monkey Junction in 2008, dishes ranged from basic to ambitious.

“Cape Fear does everything from a good old-fashioned Calabash fried platter to some really nice dishes,” Trawick said. “Back then in 2008 we started off really more, I’d probably say, on the higher end in terms of what we were trying.”

Although it can’t be compared to the current challenges restaurants face because of the coronavirus pandemic, the 2008 financial collapse and the next several years were tough times for the dining-out industry, especially for those offering higher-end dishes.

“It was 2008 and so six or seven months after we opened ... the bottom dropped out of the economy and it really probably took two, three or four years to kind of grow through that,” Trawick said.

But COVID-19 challenges aside, the restaurant has flourished and is known as a go-to location. The original Monkey Junction restaurant got some company when Trawick opened RESTAURANT ROUNDUP

PHOTO BY MICHAEL CLINE SPENCER Seafood expansion: Evans Trawick started with one location of Cape Fear Seafood Company in 2008 and now has three in the Wilmington area. There’s also a Cape Fear Seafood Company in Raleigh, where two more CFSC franchises are planned.

locations in Porters Neck and at Waterford in Leland.

From the dishes that arrive on the table, to the attentive service, “I think we do it well and we do it well consistently, which is one thing that I think a lot of places just struggle with,” Trawick said.

“It’s difficult. We have a large menu when we’re running our entire menu [Cape Fear is offering a limited dine-in and takeout menu during the pandemic]. But we cross-utilize a lot of different ingredients and have simplified it to the point that, you know, I’m not hand cutting French fries, but we’re probably an 85%-fromscratch kitchen.”

The popularity of the restaurant and consistency of both the food and the all-around dining experience has transformed Cape Fear Seafood into something Trawick didn’t necessarily anticipate when he opened – not only is Cape Fear a successful restaurant, it’s become a successful brand, including in Raleigh, where one CFSC franchise is open and two more are on the way.

A review of the Raleigh location in the News & Observer praised dishes such as grilled cobia and a seafood version of saltimbocca.

In the restaurant’s early days, Trawick was the lead chef. That’s no longer the case, and daily operational duties have been turned over to Bill Scott and Jackie Foust, culinary director and front of house director, respectively. Each of his restaurants has its own executive chef.

Trawick works out of an office at the Leland location but doesn’t stay stuck behind a desk.

“I tend to hit every restaurant almost every day,” he said. He also checks in with the franchise owners in Raleigh.

“We talk weekly. They worked for me for a long time, so we’ve got a great relationship,” Trawick said. “I go up every few weeks and just, you know, stick my head in the door and that kind of thing. But every quarter I inspect their unit … make sure they’re following our standards, our recipes, you know, checking on that Southern hospitality, just making sure that they’re following the blueprint.”

With COVID-19 pounding the restaurant industry, Trawick knows that staying faithful to that “blueprint” is the best way to ensure the locations will survive the pandemic. Like other restaurant owners, Trawick has pivoted to be able to operate in the pandemic economy – social distancing, limited menus and delivery are a few.

One of the changes that will definitely remain is the addition of an efficient online ordering system.

Prior to going that route, Trawick said, a staff member spent five minutes on the phone to take an order.

With the service sector still in such a challenging climate, Trawick often struggles to fill positions (His three restaurants combined employ 140, a far cry from the 12 he started with in 2008.) And having great employees is a key part of the blueprint that drives quality service, quality dishes and that other key piece: doing it well consistently.

It’s a blueprint that’s proven reliable and one that Trawick hopes to continue to build on through franchises (though he doesn’t personally plan to open more than his three). But the franchise expansion won’t be rushed.

“We’re a slow-growth concept,” Trawick said, a strategy that so far has landed Cape Fear Seafood a spot among the Faircloth’s, Potter’s and Gore’s as a seafood-dining icon.