Longtime Little River business is growing with the community, still family owned

Leaning on the cash register is a picture of an old man with a kind face.

He’s smiling, wearing a baseball cap and button down and is sitting not far from where the framed photo now leans on that register right next to a jar of cigarettes with a label reading “3.00 per pack!”

“In honor of all the wonderful years,” the photo has written below it. “R.W. Wood January 12, 1935 - May 25, 2016.”

When Wood opened his general store, R.W. Wood’s, in 1956 in the Little River section of Horry County, his only competition was Boulineau’s in Cherry Grove.

R.W. Wood’s was open just about every day. It had a meat department, hardware and whatever the Little River locals would ask Wood to start selling.

“He loved to come to work. I never heard him complain,” said his widow Louise Wood. “He had very little to start with. You have build up.”

Louise Wood said her husband was outgoing and knew his customers by name much like their son, Richard Wood III, does now as current owner of the business.

Under their son, the business looks quite different than it did under R.W. himself. There’s football helmets everywhere, some representing NFL teams or local high school teams. There’s framed jerseys, checkered floors and glossy wood floors, TVs turned to the news or sports channels and plenty of places to sit.

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Now a restaurant that serves breakfast and lunch Mondays through Fridays and closes promptly at 2 p.m., R.W. Wood’s attracts locals wanting a bite to eat and to see familiar faces.

“The whole community in this area is growing and I'd like to grow with it,” Richard Wood III said. “Keep the legacy that my dad started.”

Dan Durfee has been eating there, mostly shrimp and grits or the occasional hot dog or hamburger, every weekday for 15 years, he said.

“I like seeing a lot of local people there,” he said.

Keeping that legacy required Richard Wood III to learn new skills. He used to go sit at Hamburger Joe’s in North Myrtle Beach and just watch them operate, he said. He knew the restaurant route was the right way to go and his mom agreed.

The general store she managed the books for under her husband couldn’t compete with the big name hardware stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s.

“When my parents were aging, and getting up there, I knew they planned to retire and I hated to see a community staple be turned over to someone else or something else entirely. So I was looking for something to do anyway,” Richard Wood III said. “I thought I could possibly grow what my parents had already started in terms of making hot dogs. And so I had this grandiose idea that I was going to turn it into a restaurant and I really had no clue whatsoever at all what I was doing.”

Louise Wood said she felt like she was on a vacation when the business went to her son because he did not want to have it open every day like his father had it.

“I've been here 23 years. I've never missed a day and I gladly tell people all the time,” her son said. “I say we close at 2 p.m., not a second after. I get here at four in the morning. It’s rewarding, but it’s tough. It’s work.”

He’s used to it - hard work - having grown up in the store.

Richard Wood III said he worked at his dad’s store back when soda bottles were turned in for refunds. He swept floors and did what was asked of him. It was a family run business then and it’s a family run business now.

Louise Wood still comes to work there. She can be seen wiping tables and running around helping her son continue her husband’s legacy. She said she’s been told she’s crazy for still coming into work at her age, but it’s because she doesn’t like being home.

“Since R.W. died, I don’t like to be home by myself,” she said.

The little woman smiled talking about her late husband. She cherishes their memories in the general store together but most of all misses their annual North Carolina coast fishing trips.

The high school sweethearts used to take a week off and go freshwater fishing, mostly for bass.

“Or whatever would bite,” she said.

R.W. Wood died of pancreatic cancer in 2016 and only knew of his sickness six weeks before.

His wife said she knew he was getting weaker but didn’t think she would lose him so quickly. It helps her grief to be working with her son at the restaurant, though.

“To us, it’s all. That’s what we pour our lives into,” she said.

R.W. Wood’s is located at 4275 Sea Mountain Highway in Little River.

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