While we were in Winston-Salem, we decided against eating breakfast at the hotel for the time we were there because it was small, their selections were rather lame, and there were a lot of kids scurrying about. One morning, we found a breakfast place during an on-line search that we thought looked pretty interesting - the Famous Toastery. What we didn't know is that it was part of a small chain of popular breakfast spots found primarily in North Carolina that the original founders had started to franchise out the concept for about four years ago.
Brian Burchill and Robert Maynard grew up near one another in a neighborhood on Long Island outside of New York City. Best friends since their grade school years, the two took different routes in life when they became young adults. Burchill had worked in a number of restaurants in New York since he was in junior high starting out bussing tables and washing dishes, eventually working his way up to managing restaurants. When a restaurant he managed was turned into a night club, Burchill stayed on to manage that place. With actors and musicians frequenting the place, Burchill decided to try his hand at acting. He moved to Los Angeles and enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and after graduating he spent a short time working as an actor and producer.
But his first love of working in restaurants was too big of a pull for him and he moved back to New York City working closely with famed restaurateur Eli Zabar for a number of years managing some of his restaurants. But Burchill wanted to have his own restaurant - a restaurant where people could gather and enjoy themselves. He had a concept of doing a breakfast cafe and did his homework as to where a good breakfast place was needed. Burchill found that there was a void in the Charlotte, NC market and he decided to look for a place there. But he knew he needed a partner and that's when he turned to his old friend Robert Maynard.
Pictured right - Brian Burchill (Photo courtesy 1851 Franchise magazine.)
Robert Maynard had become a Wall Street stock broker and the stress and long hours were beginning to take a toll on him. When Burchill called him and said that he had a ticket for Maynard to come to Charlotte to check things out, Maynard didn't hesitate to join his lifelong friend.
At first, Maynard suggested that they do a "hash diner" breakfast place, but Burchill was against that idea from the start. Too many of those places like that served frozen and processed foods from food purveyors and the quality always suffered. Wanting to stick out in the market place with a restaurant that served fresh, never-frozen and gourmet style breakfasts, the two agreed upon the concept for their restaurant.
Pictured left - Robert Maynard. (Photo courtesy 1851 Franchise magazine.)
The two found a house in Huntersville, NC, a suburb just north of Charlotte and turned it into the Toast Cafe, a small breakfast place that opened in 2005. The Toast Cafe immediately was a hit with the locals who loved the taste of the fresh foods Maynard and Burchill were serving each day. Within a short time, two more Toast Cafe's opened in the area. Maynard - the businessman of the two - was the C.E.O. of the small group of restaurants, while Burchill - the restaurant operations guy - was the C.O.O.
Maynard began to look at expansion of the concept and talked to Burchill about franchising the Toast Cafe concept. Burchill initially pushed back at the idea saying that he didn't want to lose control of the day-to-day decisions for each restaurant. But Maynard convinced him that if they worked with franchisees who had a background in the restaurant business, they could make franchising work.
That's when David Lutton came into their lives. One morning while Lutton was enjoying his breakfast at a Toast Cafe restaurant in the Charlotte area, he saw a small card on the table advertising an opportunity to franchise the breakfast restaurant. Lutton immediately contacted Maynard to discuss the possibility of franchising Toast Cafe's around Charlotte.
Lutton had spent nearly 20 years as a franchisee for Ruby Tuesday and Panera Bread restaurants in the Charlotte area. Lutton and his business partner, Bill Bingham, saw the potential for growth not only in the Charlotte market, but elsewhere around North Carolina and South Carolina. Before signing their first franchise agreement, Maynard and Burchill changed the name of the restaurants to the Famous Toastery in 2013. Today, there are 20 locations of the Famous Toastery in five states. Burchill and Maynard have been in talks with franchisees looking to put Famous Toastery locations near their boyhood homes on Long Island, as well as locations in New Jersey and Connecticut.
The Winston-Salem location for the Famous Toastery opened in the fall of 2015 under the franchise ownership of Lutton and Bingham. The two opened the breakfast spot in the former District Roof Top Bar & Grille that had closed in June of that year. Like the other Famous Toastery locations, the one in Winston-Salem serves breakfast and lunch, closing in the mid-afternoon daily.
Actually, the Famous Toastery in Winston-Salem was sort of tough to find. It's located on Liberty View Court on the north end of Winston-Salem's downtown area. (see map) We drove by it a couple of times on N. Liberty St. before my wife looked over and saw the sign for the place. We were able to drive around the back side of the building and park in a lot in the back.
We went inside the Famous Toastery and we found a quaint little dining room with exposed brick walls, hardwood floors and antique light fixtures. The large windows were allowing a lot of the early morning sunshine inside to light up the place.
A young lady came to us and wanted to know if we wanted to sit inside or outside on the patio. It was a beautiful North Carolina morning so it was a no-brainer to sit outside that day. She told us that we could sit anywhere and someone would be there to greet us in a moment.
After taking a table underneath an overhang on the patio, a young man came over to greet us and to give us a couple breakfast menus. "Have you folks dined with us before," he asked. When we told him we hadn't, he explained to us that the food at the Famous Toastery was served fresh each day, and that they had a multiple server concept so that the person who takes your order may not be the one who delivers your food to the table, or checks up on you during the meal, or gives you your check.
"Sort of a tag-team concept," I said.
"Precisely," he said before he asked what we'd like to start out with to drink. (It turns out that it must be a requirement in North Carolina as servers at nearly every restaurant we dined at during our trip to the state asked us the same question, followed by an explanation of the restaurant and their concept after telling them that it was our first time there.)
The breakfast menu was interesting enough. They had a number of egg dishes including eggs Benedict and eggs Florentine. They also had a "Country Benedict" that featured two eggs on a split biscuit covered in sausage gravy. The Famous Toastery also featured some breakfast sandwiches and a couple of egg/veggie and cheese burritos. Pancakes - or "flap jacks" as they had them on the menu - with different toppings were available, as were a dozen different types of omelets.
One of the specials they had that morning was a mushroom/spinach quiche and that's what my wife ended up ordering. It came with a side bowl of fruit and she got a fresh-squeezed orange juice with her breakfast. She was never big on mushrooms, but she is certainly coming around more and more, especially if the mushrooms are fresh - like the ones that were in the quiche that day. She was more than happy with what she ordered.
For me, I was in a quandary. I saw that they had corned beef hash with two eggs and a hollandaise sauce on top. I also looked long and hard at the MBS omelet - mushroom/bacon/Swiss cheese. But my eyes kept wandering back to the stuffed French toast. It was French toast stuffed with a choice of fruit (blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries); or you could get it with chocolate chips, or peanut butter and banana slices. I had to try the blueberry stuffed French toast, mainly because the concept intrigued me and I wanted to see how they did it.
When the breakfast was brought out to me, I was sort of taken aback. This wasn't exactly what I thought I had ordered. First of all, it was basically four pieces of thick bread that were battered, fried and cut diagonally. I was thinking that "stuffed" meant, well, stuffed - like into pockets of the bread.
The blueberry "stuffing" was nothing more than a thin layer of blueberry compote in between the slices of the bread. There were no other blueberries with the French toast and that disappointed me. The flavor of the French toast was fine, and there was a lot of it. (I think I had five of the 8 half slices of the French toast before I called it quits.) But the more I ate the French toast, the more I was kicking myself for not getting the corned beef hash along with a side of grits. Oh well...
While I was disappointed with the presentation of the Famous Toastery's blueberry "stuffed" French toast, I thought it was fine enough for what it was. I really should have gone with the corned beef hash, but I just shrugged my shoulders and ate what I had. My wife, however, was thoroughly happy with her mushroom and spinach quiche they had a special that morning. The seating on the patio under the awning was comfortable and it was such a beautiful morning that we couldn't pass up eating outside. And the tag team service we received from the three or four servers who were working the patio area was attentive, prompt and cordial. If I would have known going into the place that their French toast wasn't exactly "stuffed", I may have ended up ordering something else and liking it more than what I did order.
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