Entrepreneurs are transforming two vacant South Loop eyesores into a restaurant and a coffee shop.
Co-owners Xavier Vance, 32, and Troy Vivrett, 31, are turning a former dog spa at 2000 S. Wabash Ave. into a white-tablecloth, chandelier- and olive tree-adorned restaurant called Southern Chicago. Its menu will feature dishes such as oysters Rockefeller, Cajun collard greens and New York strip steaks.
A former Starbucks at the southwest corner of Roosevelt Road and Wabash Avenue that was covered with graffiti after being boarded up last summer is now home to Sip & Savor. The coffee shop offers “pup cups” for dogs and an ambiance that aims to make people feel like they’re in their living room. It’s the fifth location for owner Trez V. Pugh III, 60, a retired undercover federal agent.
The South Loop — roughly bounded by Ida B. Wells/Congress Parkway, Cermak Road, Northerly Island and Halsted Street — has seen businesses including Starbucks and Walgreens move or pull away from the busy Roosevelt Road corridor. Its commercial growth is nowhere near the frantic pace of trendy Fulton Market.
Corey Black, director of retail real estate in Cushman & Wakefield’s Chicago office, said the area still offers a combination of solid residential growth and coveted commercial space that’s big enough for a restaurant or coffee shop. He said it also offers rental prices that are affordable compared with Fulton Market, Hyde Park or Lincoln Park and a location that can attract a diverse customer base from nearby Bronzeville, the Gap and Hyde Park.
National chain stores tend to gather near each other, as has happened at The Roosevelt Collection outdoor mall at Roosevelt Road and Clark Street, Black said.
He said the latest locally owned businesses are taking advantage of space left vacant because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Southern charm
Vance, Southern Chicago’s executive chef, and Vivrett, a real estate entrepreneur, met on Instagram six years ago, impressed with each other’s marketing skills. They reconnected during the pandemic when Vance started creating and selling individual meals, and Vivrett became a regular customer.
“Troy purchased a lot of meals from me,” Vance said. “He said, ‘Wow, this food is amazing. I love this food.’ ”
They realized they could trust each other and wanted to open a business. They chose the South Loop — where both live — after encountering less-cooperative landlords elsewhere. Their 5,000-square-foot restaurant is close to McCormick Place and the Museum Campus and is in a neighborhood that didn’t have a high-end Southern-style restaurant.
They were awarded a $250,000 “Chicago Recovery” grant to help with renovation, and they said they’ve put more than $400,000 of their own money into the project.
The 180-seat restaurant will have a 35-seat bar, back-to-back 38-foot-long velvet booths and an outdoor patio for 100.
“We want to put Chicago on the map as having a premier Southern American restaurant,” Vivrett said. “We want something positive and uplifting for the city. That’s our goal.”
The restaurant is slated to open in time for the winter holidays with breakfast, lunch and dinner menus the owners said aim to attract tourists and locals, with meals ranging from $31 to $75.
Breakfast dishes include bacon steaks, peach cobbler waffles and Red Velvet pancakes with homemade cream cheese. Lunch will feature items such as a vegan burger, a Wagyu steak burger and chicken pasta. Dinner will have a bone-in Tomahawk steak and an “abundant yam” side dish. The restaurant also will offer a 14-layer Red Velvet cake.
“Everything will be like a piece of art,” Vance said.
The owners also plan to open a 2,000-square-foot space next door with capacity for 250 for parties, wedding receptions and other events.
Vance and Vivrett have started hiring a staff of 45 and aim to train the waitstaff in what they describe as the chic but welcoming service they saw when researching restaurants in London, Paris, Rome, Florence and Pisa, Italy, as well as in Miami, Memphis, Tenn., and Jackson, Miss.
“A good restaurant is where you feel good about yourself, where you forget about the worries of the world,” said Vivrett, who grew up in Beverly.
He credits his entrepreneurial ambitions to his mother Donna, who owned several businesses, his grandmother Bobbie, who opened a 24-hour daycare center in West Pullman, and his grandfather Henry Lee Vivrett, who sold cars at the Maxwell Street market and let him accompany him to collect rent and deal with tenants at properties Henry Lee Vivrett owned in Chatham.
Vance grew up on the West Side in K-Town, shadowing his mother Elaine Moody in the kitchen as she made her hometown Memphis dishes. He said he also learned from his maternal grandmother Nancy Moody, who was one of 14 children, and appreciated the barbecue, macaroni-and-cheese and other Southern recipes served during family reunions in Memphis.
A local brew
Pugh opened the Sip and Savor location three months ago. He said taking over the former Starbucks site was “a gutsy move.”
The location is close to the CTA’s Roosevelt Road Red Line L stop and about one block east of a Walgreens that recently was transformed into a test store where most products are kept behind a counter, accessible only to store employees. The area had become a focal point of loiterers, people asking customers for money, selling fenced goods and doing drugs inside and outside of the building.
Before preparing the space, Pugh said he went to the shuttered store at 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. to tell troublemakers in the area they were no longer welcome.
The Old Town native, who joined the Marines at 19 and served in Japan, has a private patio for customers that’s guarded with on-call security and security cameras with feeds accessible to his and shop managers’ cellphones.
He said he was aiming to clear the way for Sip and Savor to be a cozy coffee shop “that will wrap its arms around you and make you want to stay a while.”
Pugh said that, after 20 years in the coffee industry, he’s learned that many people would prefer to do business with locally owned businesses.
“They want to support the little guy,” Pugh said. “It’s a silent majority that can’t stand going to chain-owned businesses. They say to themselves, ‘I’m supporting someone who is trying to send their kid through college and doing better in the community.’ ”
The location at 31 E. Roosevelt Rd. is set in about a month to become the first Sip and Savor to have onsite roasters, with its raw beans coming primarily from Africa — Cameroon, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda — as well as Costa Rica.
Pugh, who has been married for 40 years to his high school sweetheart Lisa Pugh, a softball player in Chicago’s 16” Softball Hall of Fame, said it’s long been his mission to support the community with his businesses. He said that, for more than 30 years, he’s rented out rooms, provided free Internet and helped find services for disabled veterans and recovering addicts from the upper floors of his first coffee shop at 528 E. 43rd St., originally called the Bronzeville Coffee House.
“I’m about making a difference,” he said. “I care about the community just as much as the business. Our motto is ‘Where Coffee and Community Meet.’ It’s on our T-shirts, mugs and tumblers.”
