The long-vacant Haley building at 656 S. Main St. next to the Army & Navy Store has its first restaurant tenant.
The Flying Biscuit Café, based in Atlanta, will occupy 2,876 square feet on the right half of the building. New franchise owner Summer Lee, who lives in Columbia but grew up in Easley, says she hopes to have the restaurant up and running after extensive build-out by early 2019.
Lee says she’s been a faithful Flying Biscuit diner for 20 years, driving two-and-a-half hours to Atlanta or up to two hours to Charlotte to get her fix.
Now, she’s bringing the all-day breakfast and lunch spot much closer to home. She and her son, Cortland Whitaker, will operate the Greenville location, while she also works to open locations in Charleston.
The café is much more than biscuits – the menu includes salads and sandwiches, breakfast bowls, oatmeal pancakes and more.
“I’ve eaten at every competitor, and I still think Flying Biscuit is hands-down in a league of its own,” Lee says.
The building’s exterior renovation has been in the works since 2016, with its going through various iterations before the City of Greenville Design Review Board. The final version, which will divide the storefront into two spaces and remove the glass brick windows on the upper stories, was approved at the June public hearing.
In 2016, Upstate Business Journal reported that the building’s owners Peggy Thomas and her son Ruark had entered into a 99-year lease with a national investor who planned to turn the building into restaurant/retail on the ground floor and office space and/or residential on the second and third floors.
