A restaurant and bar opened in downtown Cherryville this week, offering specialty cocktails and pub fare.
Brady and Mason Ford, who are twins, opened The Cherry Pit at 201 N. Mountain St. on Tuesday.
“I worked in the restaurant industry for about 10 years and I love it,” said Mason Ford. “I just enjoyed the hustle and bustle and the stress that comes with it.”
The goal of the restaurant is to create “a cool, permanent place where Cherryville residents can hang out and have a beer without having to drive 25 minutes in any direction. And of course, good food is part of that,” he said.
The Cherry Pit serves chicken wings, Brussels sprouts, macaroni and cheese and other appetizers.
“It’s kind of pub-like,” said Mason Ford.
The Cherry Pit also offers a cocktail called The Cherry Pit as well as other craft cocktails and Spiked Cherry Lemon Sundrop.
The building that houses The Cherry Pit was in need of extensive renovations and had been vacant and inhabited by pigeons for years when it was purchased by investor Patrick O’Leary, the investor behind Cherryville Main Street LLC, which has purchased more than 20 building lots in and around downtown Cherryville.
O’Leary wanted to open a bar there and has a business relationship with Mason and Brady Ford’s grandmother, real estate agent Vickie Spurling.
The Ford family owned several businesses and was interested in opening a bar and restaurant.
“He just came up to me and said, ‘Yeah, we’ll renovate this building if you want to help us.’ He said, ‘You have to fill it, but I’ll buy it and do all the basic renovations,'” Mason Ford said.
Christie Ford, the mother of Mason and Brady Ford, said the timing was a happy coincidence.
“This very weekend, my husband and I were at the beach and we went to a little place down there called Fibber McGees. It’s as small as this. Actually, it’s smaller than this,” she said. “And we were sitting there and I thought, ‘Mason would be in seventh heaven if this was his place.’ And so we talked about it the whole way home and we got to Charlotte’s from the beach and Mom called me and said, ‘What do you think about opening a bar?'”
“Cherryville Main Street LLC owns the building, so we will lease it from them and they will then be the owners of The Cherry Pit,” she said, referring to Mason and Brady.
The Ford family hopes downtown Cherryville will continue to develop as The Cherry Pit draws people downtown, Brady Ford said.
“We want it to eventually be like downtown Shelby, where there is always a lot going on. There are always people walking up and down downtown Shelby,” he said.
