Need more chicken and biscuits? New restaurant heading to Chapel Hill
A new option for hot, fluffy buttermilk biscuits, crispy fried chicken and sweet Southern treats is coming to Chapel Hill next year.
Rise Southern Biscuits & Righteous Chicken announced Tuesday its first Chapel Hill store will open in March at Eastgate Crossing shopping center, between Trader Joe’s and Bruegger’s Bagels.
It’s the second new tenant announced for the shopping center, which was sold in late 2020 to new owners. Last week, news broke that Shake Shack, the upscale casual burger chain, will renovate the vacant Zoes Kitchen building.
At 940 square feet, Rise won’t have indoor seating or a cashier at Eastgate. Customers will order their food online or by using a kiosk at the store. They’ll pick up the prepared food at the counter or from heated food lockers.
The company launched the no-contact system last year in its Carrboro and Durham stores, and also works with third-party delivery companies, such as UberEats and Doordash. That accounts for about 70% of the business, said Tom Ferguson, the Durham chef who founded Rise.
“We work really hard on integrating technology into our culture, and that’s working. I’m really proud of the people we have working with us,” he said.
Ferguson said he’s not concerned about the competition from the nationally recognized Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen on East Franklin Street or from Flying Biscuit, which is coming to University Place.
“We got voted best biscuit in Orange County this last year in the Indy, for the first time beating (Sunrise),” he said.
Rise spreading nationwide
Rise Chapel Hill will be the company’s 17th U.S. location in 10 years, and the eighth in the Triangle. Four are corporate owned, and the rest are franchise locations, with many more pending in other states, Ferguson said.
“It’s getting ready to really blow up,” he said, calling the company’s push to add more stores “Rise 2.0.”
The first iteration “was me and my 25 years experience putting everything I knew into this and really chef-driven, because we were making our doughnuts and making all these glazes and icings, and braising meats, and doing all this crazy stuff that didn’t end up being scalable,” Ferguson said. “We couldn’t get consistency from store to store, and we couldn’t get our return on investment.”
Nine stores ended up closing, Ferguson said, and he had a nervous breakdown from the stress.
In rehab, “I was given more love than I think I ever gave,” Ferguson said. He was determined to put the company back on solid footing with “a foundation of culture and love.“
That includes giving some of the profits back to employees through higher wages, he said, and addressing the cause of employee problems, rather than reacting to the symptoms, such as tardiness or sloppy work.
“It really works, and it’s a great environment right now,” he said.
This story was originally published November 16, 2021 at 9:07 AM.
