Empire Eats could become vendor for Moore Square café

City staff recently picked a familiar downtown Raleigh company as its favorite to run a café in Moore Square downtown.

Raleigh will spend $12.6 million to renovate Moore Square over the next year, and plans call for building a pavilion equipped with a café, public restrooms and office space for city parks staff.

The city this summer solicited bids from companies interested in running the café and received two offers. A group of city staff members and outside experts picked a proposal from Empire Eats over a proposal from the founders of Stanbury, whose group is known as Blount Street Gourmands.

Empire Eats was founded by real estate magnate Greg Hatem and owns downtown restaurants Raleigh Times, Morning Times, Sitti, The Pit and Gravy.

The company wants to call the new café Square Burger, which takes inspiration from Shake Shack in New York City. It would serve square patties on potato rolls with local cheese and “unique Southern toppings,” Empire wrote in its proposal.

It would also offer salads, chicken sandwiches, grilled cheese, hot dogs, milkshakes and local craft beer.

Empire hopes to incorporate the “square” theme in its branding and offer special menus on holidays. It also wants to offer milkshake tastings, beer-burger combo deals, movie nights and hot dog-eating competitions.

Company representatives didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Blount Street Gourmands proposed a cross between Shake Shack and Happy & Hale, according to documents provided to the city. It didn’t offer a name suggestion.

Will Jeffers and Andrew Shepherd are founding partners of Stanbury and plan to open a bistro in the City Market space formerly occupied by Battistella’s, according to city documents.

Moore Square sits between Hargett, Person, Martin and Blount streets, an area of downtown that is seeing new development.

The City Council will have final say over the vendor and will vote on the staff’s recommendation some time this fall, said Troy Burton, an administrator in the historic resources and museum program.

The city plans to start construction this fall and complete it by the end of 2017.

This story was originally published September 8, 2016 at 11:39 AM with the headline "Empire Eats could become vendor for Moore Square café."