Hops Burger Bar, the widely popular Greensboro restaurant and bar on Spring Garden Street, is expanding. Co-owner Chris Martin confirmed this afternoon that Hops will open a second location at 2138 Lawndale Avenue, near Geeksboro in the former Balance Day Spa space.
“We like that area,” Martin said. “We love the demographic. we like that Midtown area. There’s a lot of development going on right now. It captures an audience that I don’t think we fully capture now.”
The new location will be closer to neighborhoods like Irving Park, Latham Park, Kirkwood and more convenient for people in Summerfield, he said. Martin said they hope to open the second location by the beginning of 2016, and expect to begin construction in mid-September.
“It’s not a cookie-cutter shopping center,” he said. “It’s an older shopping center, and it just worked.”
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Hops, which opened in May 2013, was recently ranked the best burger in the country by TripAdvisor users, according to a July 2 post on the site.
“Once the TripAdvisor thing hit, it took things to an almost unmanageable level,” Martin said.
The new Hops location will have a larger bar and waiting room area, he said, but will serve the existing menu including weekly burger specials created by Kris Fuller.
The former Balance Day Spa building will be split in half by the landlord into two 3,000 square-foot spaces with Hops Burger Bar on the right-hand side. There will be space for 75 seats — 10 more than the restaurant currently has inside — but no patio. The new location will be able to resume to-go orders over the phone, Martin said, and will have a larger kitchen.
For now, the two locations will be more than enough to keep their hands full, he said, but “possibly down the road” in a year or two, they may look to expand to Winston-Salem or Chapel Hill. This new restaurant will be the only additional Greensboro location, he said.
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wooohoooo……
I think i will be getting even fatter. Eating burgers then going to Geeksboro for entertainment and snacks!
Parking at their current location is a painful experience and the neighboring businesses have to deal with customers who ignore the reserved parking signs. What does Hops plan to do at this new location that already has parking issues?