New diner opens in Burgaw; Culinary competition sparks downtown business boom
BURGAW, NC (WWAY-TV) – It’s been a couple of weeks since a new diner opened in Burgaw and it joins several other businesses that have also come to the downtown area.
Patty’s Place, located on Courthouse Avenue in Burgaw, officially opened its doors on Jan. 5th.
The new restaurant was born after the owner, Khristen Hunter, won the “Own Your Own” competition in Burgaw.
“It still doesn’t seem real sometimes that I’m sitting in my dream restaurant,” Hunter said.
The competition selected 24 participants out of 500 people nationwide who applied for the culinary showdown in 2023.
“You get a million dollar budget, you get these two buildings, you get a whole amazing team of people and you sit down and you come up with your dream restaurant,” Hunter said.
Hunter said since the competition, she’s noticed a major boom in business downtown.
“Even when we started coming here to do the competition, after about 6 or 7 o’clock it was a ghost town so it’s really cool to already see people out and about and have more to do, and we can keep them in Burgaw instead of them needing to travel back to Wilmington to do all of that,” Hunter said.
Richard Johnson, the entrepreneur and brain behind “Own Your Own” said it’s been his mission to bring new business to the area.
“The thing I like about Burgaw is just the community here, it’s such as great community and it just needed gathering places,” Johnson said.
Junior’s Deli, another “Own Your Own” Winner is just around the block from Patty’s Place and serves up house-made bread, mozzarella and sandwiches. Johnson also helped bring in the Brown Dog Coffee Company, Fat Daddy’s, a new pizza parlor and many other businesses.
“Through the deli, and through the pizzeria and brew pub and now this we really just have places for people in this town to get together and gather,” Johnson said.
As Burgaw continues to see this boom in business, Mayor Olivia Dawson is working to keep the town’s tourism dollars local. Dawson says Burgaw is the only municipality in Pender County that shares half of its occupancy tax with the county.
“Of course we are the iconic small town that we want folks to come and stroll downtown around the courthouse square and we’ve got some new restaurants coming and hopefully new storefronts, so we are just inviting folks to come and visit,” Dawson said.
Click here to learn more about the “Own Your Own” competition.
