JUNE 11, 2009 ISSUE
Business Spotlight
Char Restaurant—New Owners, New Additions, Expanded Appeal
Colton Lenz and Alaina Walker, the brother and sister team who are the new owners of Char restaurant.
You don’t reinvent the wheel—you just design it better.
That’s the thinking adopted by Colton Lenz and Alaina Walker, the brother and sister team who are the new owners of Char Restaurant, located at 179 Howard Street in downtown Boone.
While keeping a majority of the most popular items on the menu at the restaurant that originally opened in May 2008, Lenz and Walker are making other changes to help the restaurant, its menu and its price points appeal to a wider range of people.
Char Restaurant is best described as American cuisine, or “a little bit of everything,” said Lenz. The menu still features steaks, fish and pasta, including popular items from Char’s last owners and some new dishes, but Lenz and Walker are “dropping price points and adding a large sandwich menu, including burgers, to appeal to more people,” said Lenz, who also said the restaurant would be open on Mondays, which is new for the operation.
“But the ambiance is changing quite a bit,” added Lenz. The new owners are taking out a wall in the dining room that they think will help with the flow of the restaurant, and “soon one dining area will become more of an intimate lounge area,” he said.
Char Restaurant has all ABC permits and its bar will remain open to 2:00 a.m. Monday through Saturday. Art donated by the Watauga Arts Council now adorns the restaurant’s walls, and more pieces from local artists are coming soon.
Lenz and Walker grew up in Charlotte and their family moved to the High Country in 1999. After high school, Lenz served in the Navy for four years and then enrolled in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he majored in communications. Once he graduated, Lenz worked in the food and beverage industry in Virginia and Minnesota before moving to the High Country to be closer to his family. Once in Boone, Lenz worked as a server at Vidalia, then as a bartender and bar manager at Highland’s of Blowing Rock and then as a bartender at Char Restaurant.
Walker has “been in the service industry her entire life,” said Lenz. Walker worked as co-bar manager at Highland’s of Blowing Rock with her brother, which helped nurture the sibling’s future business plans.
“It’s an industry we both know best,” said Lenz. “And Alaina is a great cook. She is not our head chef, but her talents inform everything we do on the menu.”
After taking a job at Char, Lenz learned that the original owners were looking to sell the restaurant.
“[Alaina] and I had talked about buying a restaurant before, and we closed on it on May 21,” said Lenz.
The new owners went right to work addressing operational issues, while paying close attention to maintaining the elements of the original restaurant that worked.
“The [original Char] had a formal feel at times, with the white tablecloths and ambiance, but then on evenings it turned into a college bar,” said Lenz. “We want to keep all that but we realized that the whole middle ground is missing. The 25 to 40 year olds were not coming in. So we decided to definitely keep the quality of our food and keep the best of the high-end items but lower the price points to get everyone in Boone in here.”
Lenz hopes the improved menu will attract college professors and young professionals into the restaurant, especially during lunch, when Lenz and Walker are offering a frequent diner promotion.
“We are going to work hard to increase our lunch business,” said Lenz.
High on Lenz and Walker’s list is instilling a sense of consistency in their staff of 30 employees. Although a corporate atmosphere does not completely appeal to Lenz, he would like to see his restaurant’s employees adopt some of the organizational elements of a corporate restaurant.
“I want attention to detail, consistency, so eventually, what we can works towards, is that everyone knows everyone else’s job so that everything is always the same,” said Lenz. “And I want that consistency night to night, dish to dish.”
In an attempt to welcome more of a diverse crowd, Lenz and Walker are hosting an Industry Night every Monday where local food and beverage employees can enjoy drink and food specials by showing a pay stub. Char customers can also enjoy half-price bottles of wine with the purchase of an entrée on Wednesdays, and Tapas Nights every Thursday.
Char Restaurant is located at 179 Howard Street in downtown Boone. The restaurant is open from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. Monday through Saturday and from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. By next month, Char’s co-owners will debut a new website at www.char179.com. For more information, call 828-266-2179.
Community Interest
News & Notes
Events
Arts & Entertainment
