Durham Food Hall opens its doors — a little. How it plans to handle the pandemic.
In the softest of soft openings, the long-awaited Durham Food Hall has stirred to life in the middle of a pandemic.
Located in the Liberty Apartments complex across from the Durham Farmers’ Market, the Durham Food Hall has been three years in the making and joins a Triangle trend of food halls in Raleigh and Chapel Hill.
“It’s not the opening we thought it would be, but it’s exciting,” said Adair Mueller, who has spearheaded the Durham Food Hall and owns it with MDO Holdings, the company operating Ashley Christensen’s upcoming fried chicken concept, BB’s Crispy Chicken. “We love our vendors and our lineup of chefs. We’ve all had to pivot a lot, knowing it has to be takeout only right now.”
To start, the Durham Food Hall is operating its Auctioneer Bar, selling pre-mixed cocktails, beer and wine to go. It’s also selling items from its Small Maker retail shop. In the coming weeks, vendors will open up two per week for takeout. Mueller said vendor openings will be announced soon, but it appears the Everything Bagels shop will be among the first to operate, posting on its Instagram page that it would open May 22.
Little choice but to open
Mueller said that the Durham Food Hall was ready to open in early March, having completed a year-long construction on Foster Street in downtown Durham. But then the coronavirus started to spread through the country and eventually the Triangle, shutting down restaurants and other businesses.
“At first we thought we could wait it out, we didn’t know how long it was going to last,” Mueller said of the shutdown. “Then it became very clear this was our new normal for who knows how long, for the foreseeable future.”
This month, Mueller said, the food hall had little choice but to open.
“It wasn’t financially feasible to wait,” Mueller said. “Rent, loan payments, financing, none of that stops. We have no historical numbers to point to and say, ‘This is how much we’re losing.’ There’s no playbook for our opening. So we just had to go for it.”
The Durham Food Hall has assembled eight food vendors, including new locations and new projects of popular chefs in the Triangle. In addition to Everything Bagels, Locals Seafood is doing an oyster bar and market similar to their concept at Raleigh’s Transfer Food Hall.
Centro owner Angela Salamanca is opening taqueria Ex-Voto Nixtamal with Marshall Davis, Napoli Pizza will do wood-fired pizzas, Old North Meats & Provisions will make charcuterie and sandwiches, Lula and Sadie’s will offer a Southern menu and Afters will sell sweets. There’s also a flower shop and apothecary called Bowerbird, plus the Auctioneer Bar, which is operated by the food hall.
Takeout into the summer
The food hall opens as North Carolina and other states begin to think about reopening restaurants and businesses. Currently, if North Carolina meets certain benchmarks calling for a decrease or flattening of the state’s coronavirus cases, restaurants could open to dine-in customers as early as the end of the month.
Mueller said that likely won’t include the food hall early on, as she expects takeout to continue into the summer.
“For now, we’ll just stay with takeout,” Mueller said. “The increased business wouldn’t be a significant enough lift, plus when you dine in, there are a lot more logistical responsibilities in terms of cleaning and maintenance and service. I’m not sure that added business would create the total life we’d need.”
To this point, slow and steady has been the calling card of the Durham Food Hall. Mueller said they want the full roll-out to happen as safely as possible.
“We’re doing this so we can be here, and we will be here for everyone in the future,” Mueller said.
This story was originally published May 13, 2020 at 12:32 PM with the headline "Durham Food Hall opens its doors — a little. How it plans to handle the pandemic.."
