Fall 2025 was tough on restaurants. Just in the Upstate, several closed in November alone.
Mr. Crisp in the Overbrook neighborhood served its last oyster Nov. 15. Foxcroft poured its last glass of wine Nov. 7. Farm Fresh Fast shuttered in Simpsonville the week before Thanksgiving, with owners citing losses due to hurricane Helene.
The restaurant landscape is known for its volatility and thin margins, but a confluence of factors made last year even more so.
Costs of goods have risen, including food, to-go containers, equipment and health insurance. Many restaurant owners also continue to contend with a shifting workforce that has dwindled since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Couple all this with statistics that show dining out has faltered nationwide. Cost-conscious customers are eating out nearly 40 percent less often, per an October 2025 study by research group YouGov.
Still, industry leaders remain hopeful.
“Restaurateurs adapt,” said Douglas OFlaherty, interim president of the South Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Association. “They’re like chameleons. When beef prices are high, we go chicken; when chicken prices are high, we go shrimp; when shrimp is high, we go back to beef.”
While a number of restaurants have shuttered across the state, OFlaherty said, SCRLA has seen an uptick in licenses for new restaurants.
If anyone can quickly adjust to changing conditions, he said, it is a restaurant operator.
Here are four ways Upstate restaurants are keeping operations nimble in a challenging economy.
Creative menu changes
Rising costs are pushing menu changes. Sometimes, it means raising prices and sometimes it means eliminating an item completely. Beef prices, for instance, have risen 50 percent since 2020.
“You can only charge so much,” said Kristina Murphy, owner and chief operating officer of Larkin’s Restaurants, which includes Larkin’s at Camperdown, Limoncello, Grill Marks, a catering and events arm, and two event venues.
After much assessment, the team at Larkin’s opted to reduce the number of steaks on the menu. Now, instead of six offerings, the menu includes two options, both $75 and served as composed dishes instead of a la carte.
Larkin’s has filled in the gaps with creative new seafood and pasta dishes.
At Willy Taco, owners opted to overhaul the menu. Now, in addition to creative tacos, diners will also find a variety of burgers and rice bowls.
Kenneth Cribb, a founding partner with Hub City Hospitality, which operates Willy Taco in Greenville, Spartanburg and Boiling Springs, along with Flock Shop, Venus Pie and FR8 Yard in Spartanburg, called the menu changes both a financial and a creative decision.
After 12 years, he said the restaurant needed to recalibrate to stay relevant to old and new diners.
“We are painting with a broader brush form a culinary standpoint, hoping to attract more diners,” said Cribb, who recently stepped away from the company’s day-to-day operations.
Find your customer
What has become clear to Jim Canavos in his multi-decade career in restaurants is that it takes a deep love to do the work day in and day out, and that success means knowing your customers.
This has become even more important today, said Canavos, who owns The Anchorage and recently opened Pickle Yard in Mauldin. For him, this has meant investing in social media managers and finding new ways to tell his restaurants’ stories.
It’s not enough to post a beautiful food photo anymore and assume people will come in, he said.
“We have a meeting each month and say this is the focus for the month and we plan out the story we want to tell,” Canavos said. “It’s everything from what the chef is cooking to the farms used to the changing menu. It sparks interest.”
Canavos has seen the opposite ends of the spectrum this year. While The Anchorage has seen a boost in diners since its Michelin Guide American South recognition in November, Mr. Crisp, the fun seafood restaurant he owned in the Overbrook neighborhood, saw a steady decline.
While efforts to add excitement with collaboration dinners and a new social media push helped some, it wasn’t enough, and Canavos made the decision to close the restaurant in November.
Part of business is knowing when to step away, he said.
“I think we had positive momentum but from a business perspective it just didn’t make sense to keep going,” Canavos said of the decision. “We were also dedicated to not changing who we were. I just didn’t want to get to the point where I was changing the integrity of the space.”
Meeting customers where they are
Bob Munnich has noticed similar sales trends this year as years past, but the shifts have felt more erratic, he said. Sales at his Spartanburg restaurant, Dray Bar & Grill were much slower than normal, said Munnich, who has decades of experience in restaurants.
With rising costs across the board, Munnich and his team, which includes wife, Cindy, a pastry chef, and sons, Ian and Boz as general manager and executive chef, did a deep dive of their menu. They opted to pare down some of the higher-priced entrée items and added more lower-priced small plate and handheld items.
Another approach the Munnichs have taken is to lean further into other facets of the business like catering and takeout. The restaurant has seen positive returns particularly from greater investment in third-party delivery systems such as Door Dash.
Luckily, October and November revenue has been up, Munnich said, but he is already preparing for January, when restaurant sales typically take a hit.
Jorge Barrales has followed a similar approach with his family’s Papi’s Tacos. Given some of the challenges at present, the restaurant, which has two Greenville locations, has focused on reaching both existing and new customers.
To accomplish this, the restaurant has held more events like DJ nights and has run more specials and deals. This past summer, Barrales also partnered with Prisma Health to offer special discounts to the hospital system’s thousands of employees.
“The goal is to get more people through the door,” Barrales said.
Lean into special events, catering
At her two-year-old restaurant Curean, owner Vickie Zambrano noticed a shift in dining out over the summer. While total sales remain around the same level at the downtown Greenville restaurant, nights when she would typically see a stream of reservations have been a little slower. A weekend night that used to bring an average of 60 to 80 reservations was barely hitting 60 sometimes, Zambrano said.
While walk-in diners help fill the gap, the biggest boon this year has been adding catering and events.
“It was always in the plan but looking at numbers this year I’m happy we did because what the restaurant has lost in sales a bit, we have been able to make up in caterings,” Zambrano said.
The restaurant has now provided custom menus and service for small weddings, baby showers, birthday parties, community events and more. Zambrano even launched a mobile cart, which she has used for build-your-own charcuterie and even oysters, caviar and champagne service.
“We are very much saying ‘yes, what’s the question’ to events,” she said.
Zambrano is maintaining a positive outlook regarding the mercurial nature of restaurants.
“The changing and evolving and tweaking, I don’t think that ever ends,” she said. “But that’s a good thing. You’re always changing and learning and evolving.”
Dining trends
$1.5 trillion: Estimated nationwide sales by the food industry in 2025
64% of full service dining customers nationally said the experience was more important than meal price
47%: Restaurant operators nationwide who plan discounts, deals or promotions to drive customer traffic
Source: National Restaurant Association
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Food prices
+4.2%: Increase nationally from September 2024 to 2025 in full service menu prices.
Foods with increasing prices in 2025: Fish, shellfish, beef, veal, pork, coffee, fats and oils, confectionary items and fresh vegetables.
Foods with decreasing prices in 2025: Butter, eggs, milk, cheese, milled rice, fresh fruit, refined sugar and wheat flour.
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Restaurant Association, Sept. 2025
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Customer traffic
48% of national restaurant operators reported a decline in customer traffic in October 2025, the ninth consecutive month a net decline was reported. (Source: National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Industry Tracking Survey)
