Triangle cheese shop files for bankruptcy one year after opening. What happened?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Wedgewood Cheese Bar filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy with nearly $1.4 million in debt.
- The business reported over $1.3 million in income last year and $541,383 since Jan. 1.
- Judge allowed roughly $9,778 for one week of staff back wages, tips and payroll taxes.
A Carrboro cheese shop remains in business after filing for bankruptcy, with nearly $1.4 million in debt just a year and a day after opening its doors.
The Cheese Shop, LLC, owner of Wedgewood Cheese Bar at 100-B Brewer Lane in Carrboro, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 29 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, records show.
A Chapter 11 bankruptcy lets a small business reorganize its debt and seek better repayment terms from its creditors.
The Cheese Shop co-owners Stevie Webb and his wife, Michelle Webb, are claiming roughly $117,000 in assets and a list of business and personal loans, credit cards, taxes and other debt.
A bankruptcy filing shows the shop’s income before expenses was over $1.3 million last year, up from $473,232 in 2024. Since Jan.1, Wedgewood has brought in $541,383, it says.
“We won’t be selling any assets,” cheese shop attorney Lydia Carpenter said at a June 3 hearing. An audio file from the hearing was among documents filed last week by the court.
”I expect this to be a true reorganization of the company that should hopefully be able to operate without interruption going forward,” she said.
Bankruptcy Court Judge Benjamin Kahn signed an order last week allowing the shop to pay a week’s worth of wages, tips and payroll taxes — roughly $9,778 — to its full-time manager and 13 part-time employees for the last week in May.
The Webbs, who also work in the shop, aren’t getting paid but have asked the court to let Stevie Webb earn $1,000 a week while the case is resolved. They are also seeking a court order allowing them to honor 882 unredeemed gift cards worth about $34,572.
Why is the cheese shop in trouble?
There are multiple reasons for the bankruptcy, Carpenter told Kahn on June 3.
The former Cheese Shop started at a farmer’s market and slowly grew into an 80-square-foot corner of Glasshalfull restaurant on South Greensboro Street in 2023.
A bigger shop opened on Brewer Lane in May 2025 after a roughly half-million dollar renovation turned a former machine shop into a cheese and fine goods purveyor, Carpenter said. A bankruptcy filing shows the company owes $406,304 for Small Business Administration loans obtained in 2022 through the nonprofit Carolina Community Impact Inc.
The company also took on more debt after the renovation, including over $130,000 in merchant cash loans “that very quickly became untenable,” Carpenter said.
Toast Inc., an app-based restaurant management software company, collected on the loans for WebBank by taking 15% of the business’s daily sales, she said.
Their business model, which involved multiple, salaried managers, was also unsustainable, Carpenter said. By the time they realized it “wasn’t quite right-sized to the actual receipts that were coming in,” the damage to their first year of income was done, she said.
Michelle Webb acknowledged the challenges in expanding a pop-up business to a 35-seat restaurant and cheese shop that also provides catering, events, and a monthly cheese club.
As first-time restaurant owners, the renovation debt and labor costs got the better of them, Webb testified on June 3. The company now has about $10,000 in the bank, she said.
Its lease runs through Dec. 31, 2029.
“We had a cheese counter, but I think this kind of scale of a business was … we learned a lot,” Webb said. “But I think the important thing to know is well before we filed, we recognized the issues, particularly on the labor side, eliminated salaried roles, and either replaced [them] with hourly [employees] or took on responsibilities ourselves.” she said.
This story was originally published June 8, 2026 at 1:18 PM.
