Want a piece of K&W at home? Plates, bowls, Buicks among items listed in online auction

The chance to bargain hunt cooking supplies, dining booths and electronics from the closed K&W Cafeteria location off Healy Drive goes live in an online auction beginning Tuesday and ending May 26.

K&W Cafeteria Inc., a Winston-Salem-based icon of Southern comfort foods, went out of business on Dec. 1 after 88 years.

The abrupt closing of the nine remaining locations, including two in Winston-Salem and one in Greensboro, resulted in the elimination of at least 360 jobs.

A former K&W official told the Journal that when the chain closed, the number of employees in Winston-Salem and Greensboro locations had been reduced to about 40.

According to the Iron House Auction website, all bids start at $1.

Among the 203 items up for auction are batches of plates and bowls, coffee pots and tea urns, and circular dining tables and booths.

There are also three high-mileage vehicles: a Ford F250 service truck with 355,822 miles; a 2018 Buick Encore with 220,288 miles; and a 2018 Buick Encore with 207,794 miles.

There are also flat-screen televisions, printers and advertising memorabilia.

Dax Allred, K&W's president when the chain of cafeterias was sold to Piccadilly in 2022, said that when K&W operated at its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, a location that served breakfast, lunch and dinner had nearly 200 employees.

Those who served lunch and dinner had about 150.

"The K&W locations were designed to serve 3,000 dine-in guests a day without missing a beat," Allred said. "Consequently, the kitchen equipment packages were massive, tailored to meet the high volume and cook-from-scratch nature of our recipes."

As dining tastes changed and more casual dining competition emerged, Allred said the size of the operation became a burden as customer numbers dropped.

"The Allred family and the loyal K&W team made valiant efforts to make operations more efficient over the years with a fair amount of success, perhaps most notably the adoption of Take-Out shops at locations," Allred said.

However, K&W shuttered its experimental K&W Cafe in Clemmons in July 2019 and a location in High Point in January 2020.

In August 2020, before K&W filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection the next month, it closed restaurants in Chapel Hill, Goldsboro, Raleigh and Salisbury.

K&W reported having 1,035 employees when it entered bankruptcy in September 2020. The workforce had dropped to 834 as of December 2020.

When Piccadilly acquired K&W in bankruptcy for an undisclosed price, it announced a plan to keep the brand alive, including considering a return to cities and towns where K&W had been a dining staple for years.

K&W Holdings said in a Dec. 1 statement to the Journal that "this is not a decision we ever wanted to make."

"Unfortunately, like many restaurant companies across the country, we have struggled to navigate an extremely challenging operating environment.

"Despite our best efforts, the business could not return to a sustainable level of performance, and we were no longer able to continue operating responsibly."

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