BREAKING: Price's Chicken Coop to close for good on Saturday
BREAKING: Price's Chicken Coop to close for good on Saturday
No-frills chicken spot, founded in 1962, is now surrounded by tall office buildings and hot restaurants
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Iconic fried chicken spot in South End to shut; blames labor shortage and other factors having nothing to do with development boom
by Tony Mecia
It’s the end of the line for Price’s Chicken Coop, the no-frills fried chicken restaurant in South End.
In a Facebook post on Thursday morning, the restaurant said it is closing for good this Saturday “due to the Labor shortage, rising food costs, food quality and another coin shortage”:
The post had more than 500 posts in the first hour, many of which were variations of “Noooooo!!!”
The Ledger reported in April that there seemed to be soil sampling taking place behind the restaurant, which is typically an indication that development is being considered:
But in a subsequent article in Axios Charlotte headlined “Don't panic. Price’s is staying put,” the restaurant’s owner said he was “not currently planning to sell the Price’s property.”
“Everybody’s lined up. Always have been for the last 10-15 years,” owner Stephen Price said at the time.
The order-at-the-counter takeout restaurant opened in 1962, when its location on Camden Road look way different than today. If you look around its spot in the middle of South End, it was starting to become obvious that Price’s would face pressures to redevelop. Lowe’s new technology center in a 23-story building is under construction a block or two away, not far from modern hotspots Jeni’s Splended Ice Creams and Hawkers.
Multiple factors: When longtime restaurants choose to close, it often springs from a variety of factors: lucrative offers from developers, owners growing tired of long hours and other pressures, like those Price’s cited on Facebook. (Blaming it in part on a “coin shortage” is a new one.)
Back in 2017, The Observer was asking: “How Long Can Price’s Chicken Coop Hold Out In South End?”
The answer was … about four years.
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory