With new cafe, this 31-year-old restaurateur will showcase the range of Roots

“It’s simple, we want to open a place where we’d love to hang out and eat,” 31-year-old Roots owner Craig Barbour explained. His goal is to become a go-to neighborhood market that you can frequent daily.

Roots Cafe will be open 7 days a week and serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. They’ll also offer a brunch menu on the weekends, beer and wine and Enderly Coffee.

They’re targeting an early May grand opening.

Breakfast will include sweet/savory pastries, breakfast sandwiches and hash. Lunch and dinner will be sandwiches, hot/cold bowls and salads. Think Chopt meets a European deli. I can’t wait for a baguette sandwich. Roots Cafe will also offer pre-packaged meals for the grab-and-go crowd.

Expect the vibe to be more casual than Earl’s Grocery and Reid’s Fine Foods, but more upscale than Common Market.

You’ll order at the counter. There’s enough seating for about 40 people inside the restaurant. The back wall will have about 10, 2-top tables and there’ll be a large 9-foot communal table. Floors will be polished concrete and the countertop will be white granite.

“I went to New York City and visited a ton of delis to understand space and menus,” said Craig. “One of my main takeaways is that mini-retail is exploding.”

In addition to the Roots Cafe, the Roots team operates the kitchen in Plaza Midwood’s Legion Brewing and a big catering business.

If you’re like me, you know the Roots brand from their food trucks. I ate way too many tacos from the food truck they parked across from the Duke Energy building. The first Roots food truck launched in April of 2011 and at its peak, they had three trucks. They’ve since exited this business due to the daily unpredictability.

“When you own a food truck, you learn how to be flexible and how to adapt to all sorts of situations,” said Craig.

Originally from Maryland, Craig credits his interest in entrepreneurship to watching his father own and operate a business. He’s self-financing Roots Cafe. “I’d get frustrated when I worked for other people,” said Craig. “My dad told me I probably wouldn’t be happy and satisfied until I owned something on my own.”

Craig strikes me as a young Frank Scibelli – the guy behind Midwood, YAFO, Mama Ricotta’s, Paco’s Tacos and formerly Cantina1511 and Bad Daddy’s (Frank, I apologize for positioning you as old, but I spend a ton of money at your restaurants, so I don’t feel too bad).

Craig understands business and more importantly, brand. Roots is heavily involved in the community and is already a recognizable brand to many in Charlotte. The morning I spoke to him, he’d just got done catering Creative Mornings.

Craig went to school at Johnson and Wales and then went to work for several years at Carmel Country Club and brief stint at Barrington’s. This experience combined with food truck, catering and subcontracted kitchen experience gives him a wide range of restaurant experience by the age of 31.

Roots Cafe will be a hit. No doubt. It’ll win over South End quickly and establish itself as a power player in Charlotte’s emerging urban market hybrid space.