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General Store Café ready for reopening

Posted on April 3, 2008 by Staff

Vance Remick during a recent work session at the General Store Cafe, which opens its new addition Friday. By Emily Burns.

By Emily Burns
Staff Writer

Vance Remick, co-owner of the General Store Café in Pittsboro, felt that the Café had grown so much it was losing that “laid-back feel.” Expansion, he said, will restore it.

On April 3, the Café will kick off a four-day grand opening event to celebrate its new 6,000-square-foot addition, located in the historic old Justice Motor Co. adjacent to the Café’s current building at 39 West Street.

The four-day grand opening celebration will begin with an official public ribbon-cutting ceremony with Pittsboro Mayor Randy Voller at 6 p.m. Thursday, and the music group JazzBeau will christen the new stage from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m.

Friday evening, the Latin group Solazo will take the stage and play South American folk, salsa and Cuban rhythms from 9 p.m. to midnight. Beginning at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, Brenda Linton and Friends will play favorites by such artists as Ruth Brown, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.

Sunday, during brunch, Eduardo Moran will play Latin favorites from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The addition will house a large performing stage, a dance floor, a private meeting room, a state-of-the-art kitchen and the new Black Bird Bar.

According to Remick, the Café’s customer base has grown rapidly over the past several years.

“It’s gotten to a place where we really had no choice but to grow,” Remick said of the Café, which typically serves between 150 and 200 diners on a good Friday night. “We’ll rapidly double that when we’re in the back.”

To accommodate its patrons, who Remick said come mostly from Pittsboro, Cary, Apex and Raleigh, the Café is adding more than a hundred seats to its dining rooms.

Remick said that news of the expansion was a cause of concern for some of the Café’s longtime patrons who thought such a large addition might take away from the hometown atmosphere.

“It’s really a chore to maintain that local, homespun charm,” Remick said, adding that the Café’s success has made it even more difficult.
“Our main thing is that we’ll be able to continue our close contact to the local community.”

Remick and the Café’s management are committed to including the community in the completion of the new addition. Proof of that can be found on the wall behind the stage, where Chatham County artist Erick Davis painted a large mural of a bird’s-eye-view of the town.
“We have local artists,” he said, “we have a lot of local musicians, and there are usually authors sitting here writing in the afternoon.”
The Café is not only getting bigger, it’s getting greener as well.

The addition boasts a reverse-osmosis water system, solar hot water tanks, low-voltage LED lights, recycled flooring and rain barrels.
“That’s what the general store stands for – not only healthy for our customers but healthy for the environment,” Remick said. “We can do business and not be taking so much out of the environment.”

The inclusion of environmentally friendly construction methods will cut some costs for the Café and increase others.
The solar-powered hot water tanks will reduce water heating costs significantly and reduce the Café’s energy needs, but the reverse-osmosis water system, which will make water for cooking and drinking cleaner, will cost an estimated $30,000.
“We always have focused on being a healthy place to eat,” said Remick.

“In general, that’s just the way we are trying to build our business. We’re trying to be community conscious, trying to be environmentally conscious, trying to be productive and not just ‘another’ place. We try to be as close to the community as we possibly can.”

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