Fulfilling community needs: Fayetteville dynamic duo built three businesses on a passion for food and community

By Stacie Borrello, posted Aug 27, 2026 on BizFayetteville.com

Brian and Staci Graybill opened their third business together, Market Square Pantry, in December 2025. Photo provided by Faith Hatton.

For Fayetteville entrepreneurs Brian and Staci Graybill, building a business has often started when they were hit with a spark of inspiration on how to fill a missing need.

Napkins, a Hope Mills restaurant specializing in locally sourced food, was the result of an offhand conversation Brian had while tending the bar at the same restaurant where he met his wife, Staci.

“I would say, ‘If I was going to do a restaurant out there, these are the practices I would do, or this is how I would try to conceptualize it,’” Brian recalled. “At some point, they were like, ‘Well, why don't you do it?’”

So they did.

Then, a gap the couple noticed in downtown Fayetteville’s sandwich scene became their second business, Pan, on Hay Street. Finally, a chance encounter with a downtown visitor helped inspire their newest venture, Market Square Pantry.

While the businesses have different identities, they share a common philosophy: quality products, local sourcing and a focus on building community.

After workshopping the idea for a new restaurant concept with a few regular customers, Brian and Staci decided to take the chance on Napkins, their first business and Brian’s first experience owning a restaurant.

Scrappy and resourceful, Brian and Staci purchased much of their first restaurant equipment at auctions and had an opening staff that consisted of Brian, Staci and a few friends.

“We just kind of made it happen,” Brian said.

The restaurant got off to a good start. Then, seven months after opening, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Like restaurants across the country, Napkins was effectively shut down except for takeout.

For the couple, the timing could hardly have been worse, less than a year into their first business. The experience became their first major test as business owners.

Fortunately, they had already developed a loyal base of regular customers in the Hope Mills and Gray’s Creek areas. Those customers continued patronizing the restaurant as much as they could during the shutdown, helping the business survive.

The restaurant also benefited from its location. At the time, there were relatively few other restaurant options in the Hope Mills area, making Napkins a convenient choice for nearby residents.

For Brian and Staci, survival required significant personal sacrifices.

“We were paying ourselves the bare minimum that we needed to just exist,” Brian said.

Little by little, the business made it through the pandemic. As Napkins emerged on the other side, Brian began thinking about what might come next.

By 2022, Napkins had an established team and was operating well enough that Brian said he began feeling “a little obsolete” in the restaurant, leaving him ready for his next challenge.

An opportunity then arose to take over a space in Fayetteville’s historic downtown district at 105 Hay St., the former location of The Down town Deli. Brian, who describes himself as a sandwich aficionado, believed Fayetteville’s restaurant scene was missing a particular kind of sandwich shop.

“I felt like there was a hole in the type of sandwich that was being presented in our city,” he said.

The couple took this as an opportunity to establish Pan, designed around many of the same principles that had helped Napkins succeed: scratch-made food, quality ingredients and attention to detail.

The business has continued the couple’s formula of building a strong staff and cultivating relationships with customers.

“It’s been a fun ride for that one so far, too,” Brian said.

But moving downtown also gave the couple something they hadn’t had with Napkins: a chance to spend more time observing the neighborhood and thinking about what else it needed.

That led the entrepreneurial duo to their third business.

One day, while Brian and Staci were at Pan when the restaurant was closed, a man jogging through downtown stopped and knocked on the window.

He had been running, got caught up in his route and ended up downtown. He wanted to know where he could buy a bottle of water.

Brian gave him one. But the question stayed with him.

There wasn’t really a corner store downtown where a visitor could simply grab a drink, a snack or a few basic items and continue exploring the district.

“We thought, you know what? There’s not really much of a cornerstore-type option downtown,” Brian said.

Unlike the restaurants which they had worked in before, Market Square Pantry was new territory for the couple, something they could build together from the beginning while learning alongside each other.

They again relied on their resourcefulness to furnish the Pantry, sourcing furniture from closing businesses, Facebook Marketplace and repurposed furniture from home.

While Brian leads the restaurants, Staci has taken the lead role in developing the Pantry.

“It’s certainly been primarily her show here,” Brian said. “This place has her written all over it.”

Staci describes their Market Square Pantry as a combination of a micro grocery store and unique gift shop.

The store offers familiar grocery-type products, but with an emphasis on unique versions and products that customers may not find at a traditional supermarket.

“Approximately 90% of the merchandise is sourced from small businesses,” she said.

For Staci, learning the retail business has been an ongoing process.

“Every day we’re learning more and more,” she said.

Brian and Staci first met downtown in Fayetteville in 2009, more than a decade before they would open a business there together.

The three businesses have allowed Brian and Staci to develop complementary roles as business partners. Through creatively meeting challenges, leveraging each of their strengths and building strong partnerships with staff, clients and vendors, their three businesses have flourished.

What’s unique about this dynamic duo is they aren’t simply opening businesses because they see an op portunity to make money. They are paying attention to the places where they live and work — and asking what would make those places better. And when they identified something missing in the community, they built it.

Three businesses later, the couple is still looking around Fayetteville and seeing possibilities.

Copyright © 2026 Enhanced Media Management Inc. dba Greater Fayetteville Business Journal
This story may be displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal, noncommercial use only and in accordance with our Terms of Service located at https://bizfayetteville.com/useragreement.