Lifelong friends Andrew Hare and Jared Hellman opened the original Odd Duck Market in Park Circle in summer 2023. Located at 1082 East Montague Ave., the market is now a fixture in the community.
Leveraging the success in North Charleston, the duo and their team opened two new Odd Duck locations in 2026.
The Summerville outpost on Cedar Street in a 1870s Victorian house opened in January and the Hampton Park spot at 637 Rutledge Ave. just opened in July.
While each location has its own vibe, what’s consistent across the three is great food, curated provisions and their roles as a neighborhood gathering space.
The Odd Duck flock
Hare and Hellman are no strangers to operating a food business. The duo co-owned and operated Bubba Slye’s Deli at King and Warren streets. It closed in 2023.
Today, Odd Duck employs about 50 people across the three locations. Hellman shared the goal for each was to create spaces that are useful to their surrounding communities. When it came to the design, the team listened to the spaces and designed accordingly.
Summerville tends to attract more large families, Hellman said, which he attributes in part to the playground in the backyard. The Hampton Park location offers a wrap-around patio with ample seating, a walk-up ordering window and almost 30 parking spots, which is practically unheard of in downtown Charleston.
“Hampton Park and Wagener Terrace have always been a big part of our story,” Hellman said about the choice to open in the neighborhood. “My first legal beer in Charleston was at Moe’s Crosstown, and my first apartment was at 128 St. Margaret St. I think I had 15 different roommates over the eight years I lived there. One of them was Andrew.
“We looked for spaces in the neighborhood when we were first getting Odd Duck off the ground. We love the park, we love the neighborhood and opening here feels like
a full-circle moment.”
On the menu
The core menu is similar at all three locations. One breakfast sandwich has prosciutto, egg soufflé, cheddar, arugula and Calabrian chili aioli served on focaccia. A buffalo chicken wrap has provolone, tomato, lettuce, red onion and garlic aioli served on a sun-dried tomato wrap.
There’s a lox bagel sandwich with salmon, cream cheese, tomato, capers and pickled red onions. And there are muffins, doughnuts and croissants complemented by a full coffee menu.
For the littles, you can order a turkey and cheese sandwich, a chicken salad sandwich and a pizza melt.
The wine and booze menu includes a house white, red and rose as well as a house spritz, a sake bloody Mary and a mimosa, which comes by the glass and the carafe.
Hampton Park, however, has a few extras based on community feedback.
“A few months before opening, we surveyed people in the neighborhood and asked what they wanted,” Hellman said. “Some of the answers surprised us and differed from our core offering in Park Circle and Summerville. People asked for things like ice cream, take-and-bake meals and happy-hour snacks.
“All of those ideas were already somewhere on our radar, but the survey moved them up the roadmap in time for the Hampton Park opening. We now have an aperitivo-style happy hour menu with things like charcuterie nachos, snacking bacon, and bread and spread.”
Odd Duck partnered with Riverbend Creamery in Lincolnton, N.C. for ice cream. The team has also been busy in their “lab,” the name for Odd Duck’s commercial kitchen in the Navy Yard. This is where baking and prep takes place, and the team is developing new take-and-bake meals as well as offerings for the deli cooler.
“We’ve increasingly focused on making Odd Duck more of a fresh-food market,” Hellman said.
“We’ve expanded our take-and-bake meals, deli salads, sides and prepared foods so the market can be genuinely useful, particularly when someone needs to solve dinner.”
Retail is also a big component of what you’ll find at all Odd Duck locations.
Hellman noted that crowd favorites are a greatest hits list of local products. These include fresh sourdough and English muffins from Laila’s in Summerville, sourdough cookies from Saltwater and Sourdough, milk from Lowcountry Creamery and eggs and meat from Storey Farms.
You’ll also find shelves stocked by local makers like Sarah’s Dumps and Sobremesa, a small-batch mole and salsa company based in Charleston.
“Curation is always a moving target,” Hellman said. “We pay attention to the numbers, listen to customers, adjust what we carry and continuously look for new vendors.”
Great food, friendly service and a community feel make up the foundation of all Odd Duck locations.
“The core concept is the same,” Hellman said about all the locations. “Coffee, breakfast and lunch, grab-and-go food, retail and a strong neighborhood focus. The nice thing about being multifaceted is that we can tweak the recipe to fit the market without changing what Odd Duck fundamentally is. Each location is executed a little differently, but the values, hospitality and overall experience remain consistent.
“Our general approach is the same everywhere: serve people from a place of kindness and empathy, whether they come in every morning or are walking through the door for the first time.”
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