Fayetteville favorite brunch spot finds new home in Westwood Shopping Center; owner looks forward to expanding in new location

By Faith Hatton, posted Jun 27, 2023 on BizFayetteville.com

The new location will be in the former home of the Fayetteville Pie Company in the Westwood Shopping Center.

Fayetteville branch spot The Friends Table is preparing for the grand opening in their new location in the Westwood Shopping Center in suite 253.

Formerly the home of Fayetteville Pie Company, the space will soon be renovated to match the aesthetic and experience of the "upscale comfort food "The Friends Table is known for.

"The way we started was, a bunch of friends, we would come together and it would be over music and food and I'm what you would call the 'upscale friend’. I'm breaking out the china,” shared The Friends Table Owner Portia Grady. “I feel like that changes your experience, right? I feel like dining is a whole experience. It's not just the good food, it's not just the good presentation of the food, but it's the china that you eat on, the utensils that you use, the glassware that you use, and I like to elevate every dining experience.”

The new space will also allow for the business to expand in a way they couldn't at their first location which opened in the fall of 2021 in the Dogwood Bank building, formerly known as the Systel building.

The Friends Table Owner Portia Grady is ready to bring more menu options as well as catering to the area in her new kitchen space.

"The original plan for our restaurant downtown was to be an amenity of the business building, which we were. We did continental breakfast for the businesses that were located in the now Dogwood Building. We did the continental breakfast for them, quick grab and go coffees and things like that. But once people got a peek at our menu, they started jumping on the brunch wave,” shared Grady. “So then that train kind of went up and that's what we became known for. So on the weekends, we would come in to lines wrapped around the building for that brunch experience, and so that's what we're going to do here. We're gonna have that brunch experience here as well.”

Grady shared that the original restaurant kitchen space was maybe a fourth of what the team now has in the Shopping Center, adding that the along with housing the catering portion of the businesses: “Friends Upscale Comfort Food," the new location will allow them to seat larger crowds and serve more customers and the larger kitchen space will also allow for new menu items to join their already well known brunch lineup including mimosa flights, fried deviled eggs, and shrimp and grits and more.

"We are bringing all of our brunch favorites over here and we're adding some lunch items to it. So breakfast tacos are going to be a thing, our homemade croissants are going to be a thing,” shared Grady. “The beautiful thing about paying homage to it, kind of being known for the Fayetteville Pie Company is that we're known for cranking out pies and kind of pastries and things like that so we are now adapting croissants, homemade croissants to that. We had honey butter croissants before, but we couldn't scratch make them in house they're going to be scratch made here. So I'm excited about that."

Grady also shared that after getting comfortable in the new space, she and her staff hope to introduce a dinner service sometime in the next year.

Currently Grady said that the team is finalizing the custom ordered décor for the space and are waiting on some final inspections with the County, but the new restaurant is scheduled to open on July 7. To prepare, Grady said that the goal is to expand their staff by 32 new people to meet the expected demand, also adding that all of the staff from the previous location will be moving with the restaurant to Westwood.

The current opening date is July 7 for the new location.

“We're just really excited. The biggest thing for me is being able to get local talent here and kind of give them a platform. Our culinary team is amazing in that we all train internally. They were not formally trained, for some of them it was their first time working at a restaurant in the back of house, they just had a passion and a desire and a willingness to learn and we've all learned together and evolved together,” shared Grady. She also added that the restaurant was also made possible thanks to the support of The Center for Economic Empowerment and Development (CEED), who helped with the initial business plan for The Friends Table and helped secure funding.

Anyone interested in apply can do so online on the company website here or by reaching out to info@thefriendstable.com. You can see more info on hiring here.

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