PRESENTED BY
iSmash Charleston · James Island
South Carolina’s first rage room turns one. Sledgehammers, vendors, giveaways and a ribbon-cutting on Folly Road, Thursday October 1, 5:30 to 7:30.
Five Guys is going to six in the Charleston region. A coming-soon sign is up at James Island Center, the Harris Teeter-anchored center at Folly Road and Maybank Highway, and the franchisee is already staffing up.
“We are targeting a December/January opening time frame,” Mitch Steiner of franchisee Life’s Food said in the Post & Courier.
Why it matters: it is not the burgers. It is the address.
That space was Charlotte’s on Maybank until late last year, and when Charlotte’s closed it named South Carolina’s “obscene” liquor-liability insurance costs as one of the key reasons. A national chain that does not live or die on a bar program just took the room. That is the liquor-liability fight playing out in real estate rather than in a legislative hearing, and it is going to keep happening.
Life’s Food is a family-owned operator out of Mooresville, North Carolina, running more than 30 Five Guys across the Carolinas and Tennessee, seven of them in South Carolina. Steiner says the newer Carnes Crossroads store has been doing well.
Three other things from the same roundup worth knowing.
White Castle is coming to South Carolina gas stations. Not restaurants. Murphy USA is installing Crave & Go kiosks that prepare and dispense hot sliders in about two minutes with no kitchen behind them. Murphy runs more than 70 stations in the state.
Mount Pleasant is leaning into Outer Banks. With the final season out, Experience Mount Pleasant built a guide to every filming location in town, from Heyward’s Seafood to The Wreck. Muddy’s Dockside at Vickery’s has an OBX drink menu running, and Big John’s Tavern hung a banner on East Bay claiming its Season 5 cameo.
Huntington National is planting flags. The Ohio bank opened its first Mount Pleasant branch this week at 3149 Highway 17, its fifth in South Carolina, with a sixth wrapping up in a former TGI Friday’s near Towne Centre. It is aiming at roughly 55 branches and 350 hires across the Carolinas.
That last one is the least exciting and the most telling. Banks build branches where they expect the deposits to grow.
This is a summary of an article published in the Post & Courier. Click here if you’d like to read that article.
SPONSORED
Kids On Point
College of Charleston mentorship program · Charleston
This Friday, every drink sold at Charleston’s four Dutch Bros locations sends a dollar to Kids On Point, the College of Charleston program putting mentors and after-school seats in front of Lowcountry kids. Order like you normally would on September 18. Details at dutchbros.com/buck-for-kids.
