Retail: First tenant open in Raleigh’s Person Street Plaza | Raleigh News & Observer

Person Street Plaza will soon be the place to eat, drink and soak up the neighborhood.

Several new shops, including Yellow Dog Bread Co., Wine Authorities, The Market Restaurant, Grocery & Catering, and Person Street Neighborhood Bar, are moving in the coming months to a spot at the corner of East Franklin and North Person streets, near downtown Raleigh. Each place has the goal of bringing together the surrounding communities of Oakwood and Mordecai.

“We nailed it with this location,” said Jeff Clarke, the operating manager of Person Street Neighborhood Bar, who recently signed a lease on a space at the plaza. “It will be good to have a true neighborhood bar in Raleigh.”

Yellow Dog Bread Company:First on the block is Yellow Dog Bread Company, a bakery and coffee bar that opened last Friday.

Yellow Dog’s menu will consist of lots of baked goods, including 10 to 13 varieties of artisan breads such as sourdough, stick and walnut wheat, French baguettes, jalapeno cheddar, cinnamon raisin swirl and rustic multigrain.

The restaurant will have a peg bread wall that allows air to circulate around the breads so crusts don’t get soggy, said Tanya Andrews, who co-owns the bakery with her husband, Matthew, the store’s head baker.

Yellow Dog will also carry pastries, scones, croissants, cookies, muffins and seasonal items such as turnovers with apples from local farmers markets.

“Everything is made completely from scratch,” Andrews said.

The bakery will also serve products from other area businesses, including Slingshot Coffee’s Cold Brew, fresh-squeezed juices from Happy + Hale, Big Spoon Roasters’ nut butters, and butter and milk from Homeland Creamery.

Prices will range from about $2 to $10. The 1,500-square-foot space has indoor seating for about 12 and room for six more outside.

“You can kind of peek around the corner and see the maple shaping tables and the mixers,” Andrews said. “You can watch the bakers doing their jobs.”

Yellow Dog started operating in 2009 out of leased kitchen space at Stick Boy Bread Co. in Fuquay-Varina and has sold its products on the wholesale market and at the Midtown Raleigh Farmers Market at North Hills since then.

Andrews is glad to finally be in a brick-and-mortar store, especially one near the Mordecai and Oakwood areas.

“We’re the new part of downtown, I think,” Andrews said.

Yellow Dog, which will be easy to find with its big, bright yellow door, is at 219 E. Franklin St., across from Oak City Cycling Project.

Wine Authorities:Wine Authorities, a popular Durham wine shop, is opening a second location at the Person Street Plaza this fall.

Founder Craig Heffley hopes his strong customer service and success with working with small independent wineries will carry into the Raleigh market.

“It’s worked great in Durham, so we wanted to kind of bring the same kind of philosophy over here,” Heffley said. “And I think it will take hold, especially in that area.”

The new spot will feature about 500 different wines, all displayed with signs and staff-written descriptions of the winemakers, growing regions and the grapes from which the wines were made.

“What we try to do … is make the selections that we have really, really good,” Heffley said. “And that way we don’t need to have as many.”

The 3,000-square-foot store will have a tasting area with a bar that seats about 10 and a lounge that seats about 15 to 20 more.

The Raleigh Wine Authorities will mimic the Durham location’s comfortable design, with bright lights and hand-painted maps hanging from the walls.

Heffley hopes to partner with his neighbors by carrying bread from Yellow Dog and offering his wines to places such as The Market Restaurant, Grocery & Catering.

“I have been kind of in love with that area for almost a decade or so,” Heffley said. Wine Authorities is at 211 E. Franklin St.

The Market Restaurant, Grocery & Catering: The Market Restaurant, Grocery & Catering, a restaurant and grocery store that will have a butcher, do its own canning and sell local items such as milk, eggs, bacon and beer, will reopen in the next few months when it moves to the plaza.

The store, which will be an expanded version of the original Market Restaurant that closed in March, hopes to be a place where neighborhood residents can come several times a week to shop and gather. It also aims to fill a void downtown by being a spot to shop for groceries.

The Market Restaurant, Grocery & Catering, a 5,500-square-foot space, will seat about 115 to 120 people and is at 209 E. Franklin St.

Person Street Neighborhood Bar:Person Street Neighborhood Bar, a place that aims to be a true neighborhood bar, recently signed a lease next to Yellow Dog Bread.

The business is still in the early planning stages, said Clarke, the operating manager. However, he and his co-owners chose the up-and-coming area for its neighborhood feel and the need for a bar in the area.

“As far as the void we’re trying to fill, we feel like there are a lot of people in their 30s and 40s who don’t have a place that they can walk or bike to and hang out with their friends,” said Walker Bradham, the bar’s co-owner. “That’s what we’re trying to plug.”

Person Street Neighborhood Bar is at 805. N. Person St.

Black Lotus Tattoos, a shop that will offer tattooing, piercings, laser removals and touch ups, opened Friday in Raleigh. The shop will also have a custom jeweler on staff. The 5,500-square-foot shop hopes to add its laser removal space by the end of December, when a building expansion is complete. Services cost about $100 an hour. Black Lotus is at 2900 Hillsborough St.

Stanbury, an eclectic restaurant with a modern American farm-to-table menu, has opened in downtown Raleigh. Stanbury is at 938 N. Blount St. … Triangle Rock Club, an indoor rock-climbing gym, is opening its second location Friday. The 13,000-square-foot facility is at 6022 Duraleigh Road in Raleigh, next to Go Bananaz.