Brown Bag Seafood closes two Charlotte restaurants
Brown Bag Seafood has trimmed its Charlotte-area restaurant portfolio after making a big entrance into the market just a few years ago.
Brown Bag Seafood has trimmed its Charlotte restaurant portfolio, shuttering a second location here in less than two months.
The Chicago-based, fast-casual seafood chain closed its restaurant at Birkdale Village in Huntersville on April 15. It had been open less than three years.
Another location at the Lowe's Tech Hub in South End closed in February, says Zach Flanzman, president and chief operating officer.
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'We just weren't where we needed to be. At some level, you just can't make the bottom line if the top line is not where it needs to be,' he says.
The brand cracked into the Charlotte market in 2022, opening three restaurants in a six-month span. Flanzman says Brown Bag will continue to operate its remaining uptown uptown, which has been open a little over two years.
That restaurant is at the Ally Charlotte Center at 601 S. Tryon St.
'We have no plans to exit Charlotte fully. We still feel very confident there's no one else doing what we're doing in the market,' he says. 'We think the concept has every reason to be successful there — we just have to be smarter with our future real estate decisions.'
That 2,756-square-foot uptown restaurant leans into Brown Bag's strength as a brand. In its DNA it's a downtown-based lunch concept, relying on the office crowd to drive traffic.
'Uptown is such a clone of where we really feel like we offer the best value and feel most comfortable as a brand,' Flanzman says.
He says the Brown Bag brand is versatile and poised to compete well with the lunch and dinner crowds, but location is key. In South End, office traffic didn't materialize as expected to drive sales. At Birkdale, efforts to be family oriented fell flat.
'In short, we got ourselves, I think, into some real estate we thought we were comfortable with and turns out it wasn't our best choices,' Flanzman says.
He says the brand expects to grow in Charlotte; it will move cautiously when it comes to choosing future restaurant sites.
'We're still opportunistic about real estate opportunities. If there was something that hit my inbox tomorrow, it's possible. Right now, the name of the game is making the right choices and doing it in the right way.'
Brown Bag Seafood got its start in Chicago in 2014. The chain is known for its quick, fresh and sustainably sourced seafood. Its restaurants serve the same high-quality seafood found at a white-tablecloth restaurant — just in a quick-service setting.
It has grown to 12 locations in Chicago, Atlanta and the Charlotte market.
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