Happy Fork’s vision for Chapin and Lexington hasn’t progressed the way the company has hoped, but the local restaurant group’s owner is hopeful things are turning around.
The company has seen the Chapin Commons shopping center struggle to attract tenants where Happy Fork has two restaurants — Chophouse of Chapin and the brunch spot Bakon. A fourth building remains unfinished, but progress is being seen.
In Lexington, Happy Fork initially partnered with chef Henry Griffin to open Griffin Chophouse in 2020 at 924 E Main St., just outside downtown. Griffin and Happy Fork parted ways before the chophouse closed in 2023, with Happy Fork moving to a similar concept in Southern Smoked Tavern and Smokehouse later that year.
Now, Happy Fork’s CEO and owner, Ron Pereira, said he is shifting the restaurant’s focus and changing its name in an effort to improve its financial outlook.
Restaurant’s new concept
The changes on the horizon will be felt first at Southern Smoked, which is remaining open as it shifts its menu from a barbecue-focused tavern to higher-end steakhouse, albeit one where you can still come off Lake Murray in your flip-flops and shorts and get a good meal, Pereira said. The new name will be announced in the near future.
“I love the nachos,” the CEO explained while repainting a wall at Southern Smoked. “Our corporate chef named the fires after me — Ronnie Fries. Everybody loves the Ronnie Fries. But it’s not sustainable, even selling 10,000 of those things. So that’s where we had to come to a realization and make some changes. When I put out this huge plate of nachos, I don’t want to charge people $30 for that. I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s fair.”
He added that with the cost of food for the restaurant up 50%, he simply can’t make sufficient margins serving the kind of fare Southern Smoked had on offer.
The solution will be to reframe the restaurant in the mold of the Chophouse of Chapin, which Pereira said is doing very well. The core of that success is serving food people are OK with spending more money on, he explained, allowing them to get more revenue from each customer who comes through the door and better attract and keep staff, thanks to the higher tips.
“We got with the team and said, ‘Let’s just focus on what we do best,’” he said. “A big focus out at (Chophouse of Chapin) is just focusing on serving high-quality food at affordable prices.”
They’re upgrading the space with chandeliers and improving the restrooms, which Pereira said weren’t up to the standards needed. They’re also transitioning an attached space that had been a butcher shop during the days of Griffin Chophouse into a private dining room targeted at hosting corporate events, rehearsal dinners, and monthly five-course wine dinners.
Building out going slowly
As for Chapin Commons, Pereira said progress is being made.
The complex has had a hard time finding and keeping other tenants since opening in 2021. As of June, the shopping center across from Chapin High School along Columbia Avenue had one other tenant, Hyde Salon, with multiple spaces sitting empty, including an anchor spot vacated by MUV Fitness last year.
One of the empty spots next to Bakon was recently filled by Glō Skin Bar and Medical Spa, and there is finally reason to resume work on the development’s unfinished building, with a new tenant secured to take over that part of the shopping center. Pereira said an announcement about that new inclusion will be coming soon.
“Things are going phenomenal, a lot better than they were,” he said. “So obviously there was a hold-up of construction. I don’t want to blame everything on COVID, but the cost of goods went through the roof. There were a lot of unforeseen problems, a lot of things that nobody could have predicted.”
Coming part and parcel with that news was an acknowledgment that Modern Fresco, Happy Fork’s healthy-dining drive-thru concept intended for the final building, is indefinitely on hold.
“The Modern Fresco concept, that was a dream of mine,” Pereira said. “That was one where that was in anticipation of growth.”
Anticipating that the area around Chapin Commons would grow faster was a key factor as to why progress on finishing it slowed, he added.
Mungo Homes is pushing forward plans to bring 398 homes to the surrounding Brighton development , attached to the currently vacant Chapin Business & Technology Park, an effort that has been gestating for some time. The developers at Chapin Commons thought the homes would be built sooner, bringing with them people who could frequent the businesses in the shopping center.
When Happy Fork initially brought Southern Smoked to Lexington, it came with intentions to open a second location leaning away from steak and more into the barbecue and sports bar aspects of the brand. But that plan is on hold due to it being a hard concept to pull off without a good number of people living close by who can patronize the business, Pereira said, as well as another prominent restaurant group having opened a similar concept in Chapin this year .
“When you don’t have that population growth that was expected, it’s hard to invest all this money,” he said.
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