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Lexington restaurant catches fire, Brooker T's owners say they'll rebuild

WFMY News 2 stopped by the restaurant after the fire and interviewed business owners Brooke Bishop and Tammy Cornell who are also mother and daughter.

LEXINGTON, N.C. — A fire in Lexington closed both directions of Main Street.

Officials said the fire happened while Brooker T's Café was closed.

The City of Lexington tweeted that people should avoid Main Street near Uptown. City officials said the fire had been contained at the corner of First Avenue but said traffic was congested.

The restaurant just opened earlier this year in May.

WFMY News 2 stopped by the restaurant after the fire and interviewed Brooker T’s Café business owners Brooke Bishop and Tammy Cornell who are also mother and daughter.

“We’re getting all of our food out of our coolers and freezers right now,” Bishop said Tuesday evening in an interview with WFMY News 2.

Both Bishop and Cornell said the Lexington community stepped in to help when they discovered the building was on fire.

“It just doesn’t seem real,” Bishop said.

Cornell said the business is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so no one was present at the time of the fire.

“We just now got to see inside and inside looks worse than it does outside,” she said. “We just opened in May, but we’ll build back, we’ll start over, and we’ll still be here.”

The business owner said thankfully no one was hurt.

“We’re both kind of in shock, that it happened, you never think something like this is going to happen,” Cornell said. “We were here until 1:30 p.m. in the afternoon decorating for fall. It’s just one of those things, we’ll get through it. We have a wonderful community and we’ll be okay.”

She said the business plans to rebuild.

“We have 35 employees. We’re worried about them too,” Cornell said. “We have to pull up our bootstraps tomorrow and start rebuilding.”

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