By Justin Jarrett
Most anyone who has sunk their teeth into the fresh-baked bread, delicious sandwiches, or delectable desserts at Beaufort Bread Company’s Lady’s Island location over the past five years keeps the cafe on their short list of favorite lunch spots.
Now, owners Eric and Robin Staton hope to spread the word to an expanded group of customers with the recent opening of BBC on Bay at 705 Bay Street.
The notion of a second location downtown has been in the works since December 2016, not long after the Statons acquired the original cafe, and the dream has finally come to fruitiion.
“It took us a long time to find the right space,” Eric said. “We looked at several locations here on Bay Street, but it’s all about location, location, location. That’s what it all boils down to, and we feel like this is a great location.”
The new space has large windows fronting Bay Street, where customers can watch the passing car and foot traffic while sipping a coffee drink or enjoying breakfast or lunch. There’s also a community room that seats up to 20 for private events, and unlike other meeting spaces downtown, there’s no need to hire a caterer — BBC can handle it in-house.
The only thing the space lacks is a kitchen, but the Statons don’t view that as a limitation. All the food prep is done at the Lady’s Island location and brought in each morning. Although that limits the offerings somewhat — there are no French fries or fried buttermilk chicken sandwiches, for example — the menu is still ample. In fact, it’s larger than the cafe menu, chock full of ready-made items like soups, salads, wraps, breakfast sandwiches, burritos and frittatas. There’s also a kids’ menu, and everything is available all day, so you can grab a salad on your way to work and stash it for lunch, or opt for a breakfast sandwich in the afternoon.
“Our concept is fresh, everything’s scratch-made,” Eric said. “We make all of our dressings and everything. We bring our meat in fresh and we trim it, brine it, and smoke it.”
The new store won’t be ground-breaking to regulars who are already accustomed to the high-quality food BBC has been offering for years, but the Statons hope it attracts new customers who wouldn’t ordinarily venture across the Beaufort River, such as tourists and locals who work downtown and have limited lunch breaks.
“Our main goal was to bring something to Bay Street that Bay Street doesn’t have,” Robin Staton said. “We’ve done that.”
