Plans for Ed Mitchell’s next barbecue restaurant have stalled because of COVID impact
The wait for Ed Mitchell’s next barbecue restaurant looks to be a little longer.
North Carolina’s most famous pitmaster had planned his latest restaurant project, The Preserve, to open later this year in partnership with Raleigh’s LM Restaurants, the owners of Carolina Ale House.
But that project has paused, his son and business partner Ryan Mitchell said, pointing to an uncertain restaurant landscape amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“The restaurant is absolutely going to happen,” Ryan Mitchell said. “We’re allowing our partnership to step back and consider what dining looks like after 2021, what does it look like in 2022 for a traditional barbecue restaurant?”
LM Restaurants president Amber Moshakos said the company’s focus is on keeping its existing restaurants open, before any new projects are launched.
“We’re still extremely committed and excited about this project with the Mitchell family,” Moshakos said. “It’s not that the project is on pause, it’s that it’s slowed. Our focus has shifted to keeping the current restaurants open and functioning.”
Rethinking the dining room
The Preserve space will be around 6,000 square feet, built in a former Carolina Ale House location off of Wake Forest Road. Ryan Mitchell said he and his father and LM are rethinking what the dining room should be like in a post-COVID world. With the pandemic still raging and restaurants struggling through a staffing shortage in the industry, Mitchell said it’s difficult to know what things will look like after the pandemic.
Moshakos said that once restaurant plans are revised, they expect construction delays, making the potential opening timeline uncertain.
“From everything I see, I’m confident about a 2022 opening,” Moshakos said. “I want the Mitchells to see their dream come true. They’re two of the most amazing humans to work with and we love having them part of the LM family.”
Ryan Mitchell said the timeline could be later, saying he and his father have shifted their focus to working on a new book with publisher Harper Collins and participating in a new Netflix docuseries on barbecue.
“We have these other projects we’re committed to doing,” Mitchell said. “We’re trying to maximize (my father’s) energy with things that get our family to the next level. So we’ll have to wait on having the restaurant.”
Mitchell rose to national barbecue fame through numerous television appearances, often focusing on whole hog traditions of Eastern North Carolina, and as a co-founder of The Pit restaurant in Raleigh. He’s shipped his barbecue across the country through the food delivery site Gold Belly, and his True Made sauces are on numerous grocery store shelves.
But Mitchell has been a pitmaster without a restaurant for years, following the closing of his latest venture, QUE in Durham in 2015. In an interview, Ryan Mitchell said he and his father still crave a restaurant, despite the long absence from the business.
“We always need the restaurant,” Ryan Mitchell said. “We always will need the restaurant. ... I miss it tremendously. It’s (Ed Mitchell’s) whole enjoyment, walking around the restaurant talking barbecue and kissing babies. He can’t get that in today’s world.”
Hunger for barbecue content
Ryan Mitchell said he and his father fielded around 100 calls from production companies last year looking to feature them in documentaries and shows about barbecue. Local pitmasters have appeared on Netflix’s “The American Barbecue Showdown, the Discovery+ show “Moonshiner’s: Smoke Ring” and “Chopped: Grill Masters” and “BBQ Brawl” on the Food Network.
Mitchell said there’s more on the way.
“With COVID there was kind of a captive audience,” Mitchell said. “The commercial side of talking about barbecue almost tripled because of COVID. People aren’t sitting down and eating, but they’re watching and hearing about barbecue and wanting to recreate it in the backyard.
‘That’s the advantage of barbecue, the average person can get in their backyard and try to emulate what they see,” Mitchell said. “That’s barbecue at its core, a product families and people can try to do at home. That’s not always the same for other dishes and cuisines.”
Restaurants in the COVID era
Ryan Mitchell said putting The Preserve on ice is mostly driven by a restaurant industry that remains upended by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly all restaurants continue to need workers, as staffing levels remain behind pre-pandemic levels. Mitchell said whole hog barbecue, the intended method for The Preserve, can’t be done with a skeleton crew.
“We’ll get back to the restaurant as soon as it’s the right thing to do,” Mitchell said. “The labor it takes to do a whole hog barbecue restaurant has not changed, it’s the same as it was 40 or 50 years ago as it is today. The landscape of how people are dining has changed. We need to put that into the right perspective when we open and as we think about when is the right time to pull the trigger on having a grand opening.”
Moshakos said restaurant sales have rebounded, but that staffing remains a challenge, forcing some restaurants to modify hours, limit dining room capacities or close altogether. She said she’s hopeful pumping the brakes on The Preserve means the restaurant can open in a more stable labor market.
“The challenge for us in hospitality is our staffing and our people,” Moshakos said. “We’re not able to, as a restaurant community, meet the needs of the community. And restaurants play really important roles in a community for people to go to in times of crisis.”
Among the features being considered for The Preserve, Mitchell said, are a drive through and a station for online delivery services like GrubHub. While initially designing The Preserve, Ryan Mitchell said plans included a pig bar of a laid out whole hog with a circle of seats, which diners would be served from pig picking style. Mitchell said such an idea would be impossible today.
“Nobody has lost any steam; the passion’s still there for all parties involved,” Mitchell said. “These are two families in love with hospitality.”
BBQ capital
Before the COVID pandemic, the Triangle was poised to become one of the next major concentrations of barbecue restaurants, as a generation of pitmasters, including some of North Carolina’s biggest barbecue names, planned multiple restaurants throughout the area. Some of those plans have been canceled, including Wyatt’s in Raleigh, a whole hog restaurant from the owner of Picnic in Durham.
Mitchell said there will always be a passion for barbecue in North Carolina and that the pandemic is just a setback.
“It’s going to rebound,” Mitchell said. “That’s the thing about barbecue, the chatter is always there. There’s always going to be people interested. Now it’s about people getting back to living a lifestyle, a culture like it used to be pre-COVID. It’s not so much whether or not we can open, it’s what type of place we want to open.”
This story was originally published September 8, 2021 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Plans for Ed Mitchell’s next barbecue restaurant have stalled because of COVID impact."
