All Up In Your Business, Aug. 26

Johnny T-shirt celebrates 30 years

Johnny T-shirt of Chapel Hill celebrates 30 years of business today with cake, games and free gifts.

The celebration will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the 128 E. Franklin St. store.

Retail Division Manager Heather Lugar, who has been with Johnny T-shirt for 10 years, said some of the Tar Heel merchandise store’s best moments of being in business have been during UNC’s NCAA basketball championship wins.

“At Johnny T-shirt, we have a front row seat to celebrations, and that’s kind of a neat thing,” she said. “For the next few weeks, it’s like a big party atmosphere.”

Lugar said fans are always excited to come in and the business owes its customers for its success.
“Those customers — alumni, fans and students — are the reason we can say we’ve been here for 30 years.”

Lugar said Johnny T-shirt has had to learn to thrive as a small business in a marketplace of chain stores, but staff wouldn’t do anything differently because it got them to where they are today.

“We are locally owned and we like that atmosphere of being a small, one-shop store,” she said.
“We are Carolina born and Carolina bred.”

Carolina Coffee Shop gets renovations

After a brief closure for renovations this summer, the Carolina Coffee Shop is back in business.

The restaurant temporarily closed in July due to problems with the pipes.

But general manager Jeremy Ferry said the close has not had an effect on business since the start of the school year.

“Last weekend with parents here, us and all of Franklin saw a huge influx,” he said. “We have seen more students in here.”

But from now on, Carolina Coffee Shop will offer fewer weekday hours. Instead of opening at 9 a.m. on weekdays, the restaurant now opens at 11 a.m. for brunch.

The restaurant also experienced a shakeup in its management.

Ferry, who has been general manager of the restaurant for two and a half years, said CCS Restaurant Holdings, the same company that was managing Carolina Coffee Shop when he started, is still managing the restaurant.

But one of the restaurant’s managing partners, Scott Cox, is no longer involved. Ferry said the job and responsibilities just became too much for Cox to handle.

“The only difference is I’ve been assuming more responsibility,” Ferry said.

35 Chinese moves to new location

35 Chinese Restaurant, formerly located in University Square on Franklin Street will open for business in a new location later this month.

35 Chinese is one of the first tenants to leave University Square in advance of a planned reconstruction of the shopping center.

Junior Alan Hu, a regular at 35 Chinese, said he won’t be going to the new location as much because of the inconvenient drive.

Junior James Ayscue said even though he was disawppointed in the move, they won’t be losing his business.

“I knew 35 was going to close so I wasn’t really surprised, but it definitely sucks that they did close,” he said.

“I loved the sesame beef and they were really the only Chinese buffet nearby that was convenient to get to. Plus, the people who worked there were always so kind. I’ll for sure keep going to their new location whenever they open back up.”

city@dailytarheel.com