COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Folami Geter’s restaurant was closed for more than a year, much longer than she expected.
Such an extended hiatus might have spelled doom for some small businesses. Geter had taken a leap to buy and renovate her own property for A Peace of Soul Vegan Kitchen, hoping to turn it into a site worthy of the up-and-coming neighborhood surrounding it. And the renovation dragged on.
But in her restaurant’s lull, Geter’s business actually took off.
She rode a new, unexpected wave to great success: A food truck that gained huge followings in Columbia and at regional festivals, growing A Peace of Soul’s reputation and helping Geter shape the new essence of her restaurant, which officially reopened Feb. 26 on North Main Street.
“We kind of toured the Southeast, which expanded the brand far more than I could ever have imagined,” Geter said that afternoon, with a dish of her signature vegan macaroni and cheese baking in the oven in preparation for the restaurant’s first customers. “On top of our normal following, we ended up with so many more people - Asheville, Charleston, Charlotte, Atlanta. We were able to bring what we do here to them.”
A Peace of Soul Vegan Kitchen will still be familiar to those who dined in its original days, back when Geter took over her father’s Lamb’s Bread vegan soul food restaurant (one of Columbia’s first all-vegan restaurants). She’s still serving entirely plant-based staples like her purple cabbage, collards and black-eyed peas.
But in some ways, the restaurant has been reborn with new energy - and new items on the menu, which Geter has tested out with the food truck. The biggest surprise and by far the biggest success on the new menu, she said, has been her fried chicken sandwich.
“I’ve never eaten meat. I don’t know how fried chicken is really supposed to taste, and that’s a Southern classic that you can’t mess with if you don’t know what you’re doing. So I was hesitant at first,” Geter said. “When I tell you that has been the biggest seller for the last eight months - literally, people are here before I’m here, waiting on us. ‘Is it ready yet? Is it ready yet?’”
With other surprisingly meatless dishes such as chili cheese dogs, bacon cheeseburgers and barbecue spare ribs, Geter’s 100% plant-based menu has earned a reputation for its ability to win over even the most devout meat-eaters.
“As a pescatarian who flirts with veganism every once in a while, it’s been a wonderful respite for so many of us for so long,” Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin said at a grand reopening event for the restaurant on Feb. 26.
Vegan eating strictly excludes any products that come from animals, including meat, eggs, cheese and other dairy products. Veganism is rising in mainstream popularity, and plant-based menu items are becoming more prominent in local restaurants.
“We have been kind of a cult classic for a really long time,” Geter said. “What’s unexpected is it doesn’t taste like cardboard. It’s very flavorful. It’s the food you’ve grown up eating if you’re from the South, just without the meat, without the harsh additives, the pesticides, you know, the things that aren’t so great.”
With the brick-and-mortar restaurant back up and running, Geter will ease off the gas pedal on the food truck. She still plans to take it to an upcoming food festival, and it will make occasional appearances at downtown Columbia’s Soda City Market on Saturdays, she said.
A Peace of Soul is an example of the surge of small businesses filling in the North Main Street corridor, with the city putting its weight behind them to help boost the area.
Geter secured a loan from the city’s Office of Business Opportunities and the S.C. Community Loan Fund to help her purchase and upfit the restaurant building.
The city saw potential in Geter and in A Peace of Soul - not just from a financial standpoint, but real character and promise, said Bret Whiting, the city’s loan officer with the Office of Business Opportunities.
“As a lender, you definitely have to do everything by what the numbers tell you,” Whiting said. “But I can tell you, for as long as I’ve been doing lending, you get a gut and a reading that sometimes speaks louder than what you can see on the paper. And I had that. … There’s something special about this person, and it’s proven to be true.”
A Peace of Soul rejoins a burgeoning corridor that’s welcomed a slew of mom-and-pop businesses in very recent years, from the Vino Garage wine shop to War Mouth restaurant to Cromer’s P-Nuts. The area looks to receive another big boost in the next two years, with plans for an expansive craft beer brewery to open farther up North Main.
A Peace of Soul Vegan Kitchen is located at 2338 Main St. in Columbia. It is open from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, and 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.
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