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Sep
20
Local Restaurants to Join RDU
Written by S. Beaumont and filed under Development, Food and Beverage
Triangle Business Journal is reporting that Carolina Ale House and 42nd Street Oyster Bar will be among several new additions to RDU’s newly renovated Terminal C.
It will be interesting to see if this is little more than a name-lending move for these notable local establishments, particularly the Oyster Bar. An ‘Olde Raleigh mainstay steeped in tradition, I find it interesting that they’d look to expand into such an impersonal arena. It also seems curious they’d risk their brand by sharing walls with a cheese-ball gift shop or a burger joint full of disgruntled employees. I don’t really think the the downtown location will suffer from this and I’m sure that the regulars could care less, but like an ill-prepared oyster, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Links:
Full article from TBJ
RDU Terminal C Developments
42nd Street Oyster Bar
Comments
7 Responses to “Local Restaurants to Join RDU”
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I’m with you on the oddity of the Oyster Bar being in the terminal. I truly hope they are aiming for a higher end design, following their roots. I see a good side to this, which is that they are actually putting something local to the terminals rather than chains.
But, I’ll be sticking to the downtown version…
I dunno SB, this might be a good thing. Think about how early we have to get to airports these days … it might be nice to have a little piece of downtown at the airport.
Maybe we could get them to add Clyde Coopers, and Mecca too.
I definitely prefer the local option vs. a chain, I just couldn’t have predicted that it would have been 42nd St in a hundred guesses. I didn’t mean to come across as not supporting it though. I hope they do great out there along with the others…
With one proviso - that it is done right - good design, good food, I think this is great. The terminal looks to be very modern and grande (based on the RDU website), and I would much rather see something unique to Raleigh in there than a Legal Seafoods. As for the choice with downtown - is that really a choice? Would anyone park at the airport and assuming the restaurant is not past security, go into the terminal to eat instead of going downtown? And let’s not over-rate the food downtown by the way - the appeal is that it is a unique place, with fresh “well” prepared food. It’s not much beyond that.
re: “As for the choice with downtown - is that really a choice? Would anyone park at the airport and assuming the restaurant is not past security, go into the terminal to eat instead of going downtown?”
Yeah, I wasn’t trying to imply that they would be competing for customers — sort of the opposite, that one group would of patrons wouldn’t relate to the other at all (locals vs. the travel crowd)
gotcha.
The more I think about this, I would love to see more local places in the terminal - maybe a BBQ place (Q-shack type?), Southern Seasons with a bigger place than now, Third Place or Helios for coffee….
Southern Season is already part of the new plan. Not sure what size though.
I think a coffee place would be great, but it seems like SBucks dominates the airport coffee market and in a transient place like the airport most people might choose what they know versus a local unknown. It may also be hard to recruit skilled baristas to work at the airport.