CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The husband and wife owners of Lulu’s Maryland Style Chicken and Seafood faced one hurdle after another trying to open their second location. After 15 months of pandemic-related delays, and an ongoing road construction project that slowed their growth, the grand open has arrived.
Miketa Davis said she could never have imagined how long it would take to get to the opening day for the second Charlotte location.
“This one took a lot longer," she said. "The first one took 30 days for the first Lulu’s, and 15 months for this one.”
Davis and her husband Jay opened their first restaurant on Tuckaseegee Road in 2019, but this second location on The Plaza has faced one issue after the next.
“Construction, shortage in supplies, supply-demand, prices increasing, hiring…when I say any and everything that could come at us, I mean it," Miketa Davis explained. "The normal ebbs and flows that happen at restaurants all happened at one time, and that was the most frustrating part, but we made it work.”
The couple, who originally met as bounty hunters, is used to getting out of tricky situations. This mess was something different all together.
A construction project, which the City of Charlotte said has faced its own delays, has made it almost impossible to get to their restaurant. When WCNC Charlotte tried to visit the restaurant, we even struggled to get close enough just to record video.
“What that [project] essentially did was it blocked off all traffic coming into our parking lot," Jay Davis explained. "We went from doing really well to operating at about 30%.”
That meant money set aside to open the new location was instead used to keep the original restaurant afloat.
“We didn’t anticipate the steady decline," Jay Davis added. "We had to pivot very quickly. We were able to maintain, but still a little bit of a headache."
“We get to kind of breathe a little bit," Jay Davis said, "Gives us freedom to breathe.
And freedom to dream about what’s to come. The couple is hoping to expand and open more restaurants around the city, state and country without franchising; they want to own them all.
Contact Michelle at mboudin@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.