A self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur, Rob Bouton is the owner of popular downtown cafe and corner store Queen Street Grocery. He’s also an actor who most recently played the role of “Todd the Inspector” in Tyler Perry’s Assisted Living on BET. He’s a well-seasoned traveler with plans to visit as much of the world as he can with his wife, Hannah Piazza. At the end of the day, though, his favorite place to be is at home in Charleston.
“Charleston’s where we come to relax and chill,” said Bouton. “I’m really a homebody when I’m home a lot. Traveling gives you a certain boost of energy that you can’t get from just sitting at home.”
Bouton and Piazza have spent a lot of time in Italy, particularly of late. Piazza recently applied for and received Italian citizenship by descent, and the couple is considering splitting more time between the two countries.
When they’re not jetsetting, Bouton and Piazza reside in a cozy 1920s craftsman-style home in Wagener Terrace. Bouton describes the home’s interior style as bohemian,” and with an eclectic mix of art, rugs and bookshelves piled high with years and years of National Geographic copies, the word seems to fit.
Bouton prides himself on his home’s art collection, with pieces from the couple’s many travels as well as a couple of recent additions from Piazza’s grandfather, who started painting in his 80s. The couple loves supporting local artists, too, with pieces from Julia Deckman and Isabel Bornstein. Deckman’s piece is a huge portrait of Bouton’s late labrador, Royal, donning sunglasses that read “rock star.”
The home’s new rock star pup is Mochi, a five-year-old Shih-Tzu who welcomes guests to his home with his beloved stuffed toy pig, or after a dire situation in which Bouton realized his pet website no longer sold pig toys, the occasional giraffe.
Making memories
One of Bouton’s favorite pieces of family history, displayed on a shelf in his living room, is a shadow box that contains all of his grandfather’s World War II medals, including a Purple Heart. Last year, Bouton and his father, brothers and cousin traveled to France to follow in Capt. William Innes Bouton’s footsteps, recreating the journey he took to help liberate the country in 1944.
Needless to say, family is deeply important to Bouton, who grew up with brothers in Greenville, South Carolina. Born smack dab in the middle of his brothers, Bouton said he embodies the middle child cliche of taking a very different path than his siblings.
“They both married their college sweethearts and are about to be empty nesters, and I didn’t get married until I was 44,” he said. “But I wouldn’t change it. You know, there’s a million different ways to do life.”
One way Bouton “does life” is by assigning each year its own word, which subsequently gets turned into an Instagram hashtag. This is the year of the “resurgence,” which Bouton said was fitting after last year’s word, “reset.”
“I had to reset some things to get ready for a resurgence,” Bouton said. “It’s all part of the master plan.”
This year’s plans include developing a hotel in Greenville, a big project that Bouton’s excited to add to his ever-growing resume.
“We’ve got 30 condos on top of the hotel and Greenville is having a similar kind of boom that Charleston is having,” he said. “To do a project in my hometown is really kind of cool.”
While the Greenville hotel looks to the future, Bouton’s other business baby, Queen Street Grocery, is firmly rooted in the past. The store celebrated 100 years on the corner of Queen and Logan streets in 2022.
“Charleston’s changed quite a bit in the 13 years I’ve owned [Queen Street Grocery], and it’s been a hell of a ride,” he said. He credits a strong staff with running the business while he’s away.
Bouton said that after years of living all over the world and in big U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, he knew he wanted to make Charleston his home base. He said his time in New York led to a love of bodegas — “I love what they do for the neighborhood” — and when an opportunity to take over Queen Street popped up, he went for it.
“Bodegas kind of bring in the entire neighborhood and that was important to me, to represent the community and to make sure that we have a place that everybody feels welcome,” he said. “It was a really good way to come to Charleston because it gave me a reason to be here. … We want to be the corner store of your dreams.”
Neighborhoods are important for businesses, sure, but they’re also a huge factor for folks trying to decide where to settle in a city. Before moving into their Wagener Terrace abode, Bouton and his wife lived down near East Battery — a part of the city that doesn’t necessarily have a lot of full-time residents.
“It felt like we lived in Disney World a bit,” Bouton joked. It was flooding, though, that ultimately pushed him out of the house. “So we swam upstream. … I wish we’d come here 15 years ago. It’s much more of a normal family [neighborhood] with two sidewalk streets. Everybody that’s here is living here and working here and active in Charleston.”
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