Bull City-based breweries, restaurants and hospitality groups help drive Wilmington’s rise as a foodie destination
By Anna-Rhesa Versola
Durham’s recent economic renaissance is expanding to the coast, with several local hospitality businesses having opened locations in the Wilmington area in the past three years.
Dram & Draught, Ponysaurus Brewing Co., Bull City Ciderworks and Cugino Forno have each established themselves in the Port City, while Giorgios Hospitality Group has opened three restaurants – Kipos Hellenic Cuisine in Lumina Station, G Prime Steak & Cellar near Landfall Park and the Commodore Club at Wrightsville Yacht Club in Wrightsville Beach.
“Since visitors often seek out familiar places when they travel, Durham visitors may enjoy experiencing their favorite restaurants and breweries when traveling to Wilmington and our island beaches,” said Connie Nelson, communications and public relations director of the Wilmington and Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Nelson said that Wilmington claimed the top spot in Southern Living’s 2024 “Top 25 Cities on the Rise,” a first for the city. She said the coastal region has seen significant growth due to pandemic-related migration and increased investments in economic development and job opportunities. According to the state’s official destination marketing organization, Visit North Carolina, New Hanover County’s tourism industry generates more than $1 billion in annual economic impact, creates 6,676 jobs and contributes $74.8 million to the state and local tax bases. With Wilmington experiencing remarkable economic growth, the city, much like Durham, is rapidly growing as a culinary hotspot.
CULINARY WAVE OF CHANGE
Nelson said that transformations along the Wilmington Riverwalk over the past 10 years include new restaurants, a riverfront park with an amphitheater and houseboat vacation rentals at Port City Marina. There’s also been a boom in the number of boutique hotels, specialty tours and cruises, entertainment and watersports.
But the most dramatic change has been in the quality of dining experiences, as Wilmington attracts more celebrated chefs and James Beard Foundation nominees and honorees like Giorgios Bakatsias. The Durham-based restaurateur and owner of the Giorgios Hospitality Group – also a previous James Beard Foundation semifinalist for “Outstanding Restaurateur” – set his sights on the city as he continues his quest to create fresh culinary concepts. Giorgios currently owns 19 restaurants statewide, including six in Durham and three in Wilmington, according to Ashley Brodie, the group’s director of marketing. Each location employs between 25 and 50 staff members.
The latest venture is a private partnership that opened in June – the Commodore Club at the Wrightsville Yacht Club. Diners can navigate the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway into the marina and dock next to the two-story, 6,000-square-foot floating restaurant that seats 150. You must be a member to dine at the exclusive restaurant; the 2024 initiation fee is $30,896 with annual dues of $2,500.
Giorgios’ two land-based restaurants, Kipos Hellenic Cuisine and G Prime Steak & Cellar, feature gardens, very much in line with his Triangle-based concepts, which often have lush outdoor dining options. “It’s part of how he pays homage to his childhood and his family,” Brodie said. “It goes back to his [Greek] roots.”
Brodie said the corner property at Lumina Station was the Giorgios’ first property in Wilmington, opening in summer “We wanted to make it a little bit different, a little more elevated, celebrating the local seafood of the area,” Brodie said of the 140-seat Kipos. “[Giorgios] likes to work with local purveyors and be very much part of the community, so tapping into what is available locally was very important.” The second Giorgios restaurant, G Prime, opened the day after Thanksgiving last year. Its dining room offers seating for 150 guests, while the piano bar lounge area seats an additional 50. Outside, a 1,061-square-foot garden provides seating of 80 to 100 guests.
RAISING THE BAR
Wilmington is now home to 20 different breweries, Nelson said, cementing itself as a craft beer destination. And the number of distilleries is on the rise, with five locally owned distilleries opening in the past five years. Nelson said the largest distillery – End of Days – opened only a month before the global pandemic shutdown and pivoted to producing hand sanitizer instead of vodka. The business has since recovered and expanded its production and facility.
Guided food tours and new culinary events, such as Port City Taste Restaurant Week (which takes place in the spring and fall), Cape Fear Craft & Cuisine (April) and Feast Wilmington (March), have grown in popularity in recent years. Peak tourist season, like so many beach and shore-adjacent communities, is Memorial Day through Labor Day. “Visitors find our shoulder seasons and winters mild; it rarely snows on the coast,” Nelson said. “Unlike some other coastal destinations, most businesses in New Hanover County operate year-round, and Wilmington has a vibrant arts community with year-round cultural events.”
Nick Hawthorne-Johnson, co-founder and co-owner of the Cast Iron Group, which includes Ponysaurus, said Wilmington stood out to him. “It’s the shining city on the coast,” he said, citing a rising caliber of hospitality services. “It’s similar to Durham, and I think as a city it hits way above its weight with the quality of food and drink that’s being served there. You know, there are sides to the town, quite a lot of very high-quality places, and people doing really great work. Being a part of that community, linking arms with those colleagues and working together to do more of that, it’s exciting to us.”
Johnson said he remembers when the 6,000-square-foot Ponysaurus first opened in Durham in 2013. “It was Triangle Brewing and Fullsteam Brewery,” he said, naming two of the few established breweries at the time. “And now, I don’t even know how many there are. I get called all the time to borrow a piece of equipment, a bag of malt, some hops when somebody’s run out, or whatever. It’s not like big beer; you know, we’re all craft breweries, and craft breweries are less about fighting against one another and more about trying to establish a space for our products broadly in the bigger beer market. We work together as much as we compete, if we’re doing it well.”
Johnson said the 5,200-square-foot Wilmington Ponysaurus opened in January with a larger kitchen than its Durham location for full restaurant service, a two-floor indoor space that seats 400 and a spacious outdoor beer garden. The location, which has about 40 employees, will offer live music and events by the end of summer, he said. The hospitality group, which also owns The Cookery, The Rickhouse and Dashi in Durham, recently expanded Ponysaurus again, this time to Raleigh, opening April 1 at Raleigh Iron Works.
“It’s a terrifying, huge investment,” Johnson said. “Without my unwavering optimism, we would never have started in Durham, so I just carry that optimism on to believe that it can be done in Wilmington, too.
“It’s an awesome city. It’s got an amazing island culture, beach culture, [even] though it’s not directly at the beach. One of [Cast Iron’s] directors, [Sarah Voran, director of marketing and strategic development] is from Wilmington. She took us down there and showed us around as we were looking at various cities, and it’s got a lot of similar things to Durham. It’s got a cool downtown with cool building stock and a vibrant food and beverage scene in the downtown area.”
SHARED IMPACT
Johnson said that Durham will attract further potential economic development, with corporations like Google and Apple wanting to be part of the Triangle (though the latter recently pressed pause on the development of its Research Triangle Park campus).
“Those are a lot of very high-paying jobs,” he said. “When you live [in Durham] and you think about going to the beach, you go to Wilmington. I think Wilmington is going to see a lot of secondary growth. It’s happening. That was part of why we thought it was good. There is a good future going forward.”
“They’ve done a lot of work in Wilmington to expand their convention center and to do more things that are programmatic beyond being a summer getaway place,” said Susan Amey, president and CEO of Discover Durham. “I think they have some of that [Durham] vibe of being a creative place that is attractive to younger generations and people who are creative types and entrepreneurs.”
Amey pointed out that many people living in the Triangle regularly visit Wilmington because of the relatively short two-hour drive from the Bull City. “I’m thinking that, for a restaurateur in Durham who wants to expand toward the east, Wilmington would be a natural selection as an energetic city that has a population year-round that can support a successful restaurant,” she said.
Dram & Draught founder and co-owner Kevin Barrett said opening a bar in Wilmington was not originally part of his larger business plan, mentioning how the pandemic “threw everything off.”
The first Dram & Draught opened in Raleigh in 2016, followed two years later by one in Greensboro. “We were expanding at a pretty steady, even pace at that point, then the pandemic happened,” Barrett said. “Durham is a big, beautiful location, and it was almost completely done, minus the furniture, and we just couldn’t open it. So, it ended up being over a year later [in 2021 before] we actually opened.”
Then, an irresistible opportunity presented itself downtown, one block from the Cape Fear River. “I used to live in Wilmington, so I have a deep attachment to that city,” Barrett said. “We had a wonderful location pop up, so it ended up being our fourth one.” The Wilmington space is smaller than Durham’s, but it features an upstairs lounge that aligns with the casual, laid-back vibe of the city.
Barrett said the current plan is to grow their clientele at all seven locations of Dram & Draught, including Winston Salem, Charlotte and at Fenton in Cary. “After five bars in a year and a half, we’re not ready to expand anywhere anytime soon,” Barrett said. “Coming out of the pandemic was a difficult period for us, but we got through it. We have all our bars, and now we’re just letting the dust settle a little bit before we decide to go anywhere else. After 2020, I’m confident we can survive anything.”
Hospitality Industry Forecast
More restaurants are hiring and the demand for quality dining options is expected to rise. The North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association launched “Serving Careers,” a campaign to help improve statewide labor shortages within the hospitality industry, last year in response to this outlook.
“Restaurants and lodging establishments are driving forces in North Carolina’s economy,” Christine Mackey, NCRLA chief strategy and communications officer. “They provide jobs and build careers for thousands of people and play a vital role in local communities throughout the state.”
Mackey said that, combined, restaurant and lodging establishments provide 453,050 jobs, equal to 9% of the state’s workforce, and generate approximately $34.9 billion in sales annually.
Statewide, there are 20,300 more leisure and hospitality jobs in May this year compared to the same month in 2023 for seasonally adjusted employment data, according to a NC Department of Commerce report released in June.
The U.S. restaurant industry workforce is projected to grow by 200,000 jobs on top of the 15.7 million employees projected by the end of this year, according to the National Restaurant Association.
Kevin Barrett, co-owner and founder of Dram & Draught, said he feels optimistic about growing his business and expanding his clientele. “We’ve always probably done better than our industry with staffing,” Barrett said. “We have great retention. We have ongoing staff training. I think our managers do a good job of making everybody feel included. Our cocktail menus are a group effort.”
