A new food venture is in the works for a darkened dining venue in Mount Pleasant.
The owners of Get Carried Away Southern Market in Pawleys Island and the well-known Palmetto Cheese pimento cheese brand plan to open an outpost about 70 miles down the coast at 644 Coleman Blvd. It's taking the former site of Wild Wing Café in Moultrie Plaza Shopping Center. The restaurant closed in 2018 after 22 years.
Get Carried Away co-owner Brian D. Henry, who's the mayor of Pawleys Island, said the idea is to recreate the current shop along U.S. Highway 17.
"We are basically taking the operation in Pawleys Island and opening up a larger location in Mount Pleasant," Henry said. "It will mainly be a production facility."
The shop will offer to-go items such as on-site prepared casseroles, tomato pie, Lowcountry boils, dips, appetizers and desserts. It also will have coffee, beer and wine.
The new site will have outdoor seating for onsite dining. Current plans do not provide for indoor seating.
"We are now going through the permitting process with the town," Henry said. "We know what we want to do, but we will have to wait to see what we can do."
The site will require some demolition and new kitchen equipment, but if all goes as planned, the goal is to open in December.
"We will pretty much have to redo that kitchen," Henry said. "Christmas might be aggressive, but that's what we are aiming for."
Henry's nephew, Rankin Woley, will manage the new site.
Woley said the company signed a five-year lease for the 8,030-square-foot space with the option for two additional five-year terms.
"We hope to be there permanently," Woley said.
The company chose Mount Pleasant for a new location because it's within short driving distance of the Pawleys Island production site and it will cater to locals and vacationers alike.
"The Charleston market is growing, and Mount Pleasant is booming," Henry said. "The location has high traffic and it's close to Shem Creek. A lot of families are in the area. We feel confident that it's a business that fits the community and what the community wants."
The owners might add some Charleston-area favorites to their menu offerings, but those have not been decided.
"If you are entertaining, it will be a one-stop shop for everything," Henry said.
As mayor, Henry stepped into controversy in 2020 after calling Black Lives Matter a "terror organization" in a Facebook post, a reaction to a double murder in Georgetown in which the accused was a Black man.
The NAACP held rallies that called for Henry's resignation, and Costco pulled the company's Palmetto Cheese products from its shelves. Henry later apologized, saying his comments were "hurtful and insensitive."
The company survived and continues to thrive, and Henry was re-elected to a second two-year term last November.
Henry and his wife, Sassy, moved to Pawleys Island in 2002, when they bought Sea View Inn, where Sassy's homemade pimento cheese spread was served as an appetizer during summer Lowcountry shrimp boils. It was then offered in a couple of Grand Strand-area stores before being picked up across the state by other food shops.
The Palmetto Cheese brand can now be found in more than 9,100 grocery stores in 41 states.
The Get Carried Away venture of offering a variety of different prepared foods for vacationing families was conceived in 2005 and launched in 2011.
"We now have orders from across the nation," Henry said.
