Pop-up restaurant (noun): a temporary restaurant operating in an existing restaurant or similar establishment.
Pop-up restaurants grew by 105% from April 2022 to March 2023, compared to the same period the previous year, according to a 2023 Yelp report.
While the concept of a pop-up restaurant is nothing new, they seem to be having a moment, especially in Charleston. A pop-up appeals as much to diners — foodies looking to try something new — as it does to restaurant owners and operators, who have kitchens to fill and customers to feed.
Many pop-ups embody the name to a tee, sprouting at a variety of restaurants, breweries and festivals every other weekend or on select weeknights.
Some pop-ups, though, have a longer residency in place. They exist in the rare liminal space, somewhere between a well-established brick-and-mortar restaurant and, say, a food tent at a beer festival. You may find them at the same place, same time every week. They’re there for now. And that’s the beauty of it.
Bringing Folly to the Pour House
The Charleston Pour House, an uber-popular local music venue owned and operated by Vanessa and Alex Harris, has hosted food concepts on its back deck for several years now.
Earlier this year, Pour House reached out to the team at Folly Beach-based Jack of Cups Saloon and asked if it wanted to open a concept at the venue. “Vanessa called me out of the blue and I said yes within 25 seconds,” said Lesley Carroll, co-owner and executive chef of Jack of Cups.
Carroll lives in Riverland Terrace, the neighborhood directly across from the Pour House. “It feels like going home a bit,” said Carroll. They dubbed the Pour House-based concept bebop, a name with several meanings. Carroll said that in addition to being a jazz reference, bebop also refers to the staff’s favorite anime show, “Cowboy Bebop.” Just look to bebop’s Instagram to see their mantra: “That’s jazz, baby.”
“We’re trying to make this a landing pad for all the weird, dumb, quirky ideas that we don’t get to flex a lot,” Carroll said. “This will be our fun spot.”
When it comes to pop-ups, timing is everything, and the timing was just right for bebop at the Pour House. Carroll and the Jack of Cups team are opening a second location, Trading Post, later this year. The opening of the James Island restaurant has faced some unexpected delays, which, while frustrating, opened up some time and space for Carroll.
“The fact that we were geared up for another location and [experienced] this unintended pause was so perfect,” Carroll said. She said that bebop serves as a test kitchen of sorts for Trading Post and added that the pop-up is changing its menu as often as every three weeks.
“I’m very fortunate to have the staff to support me [so that] we can try casual things,” she said. Both bebop and Jack of Cups embody a fun and funky menu and approach to food, fitting concepts for their laidback locations.
“One of our friends said ‘I just want to dance to a show with a corn dog in each hand,’ ’’ she laughed. “They were not kidding, they really wanted to dance around with corn dogs! We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re not above corn dogs. Every food has its place. It’s been fun to let our hair down.”
With a menu divided into “snacks” and “big snacks,” bebop’s recent offerings have included a pita pizza, tomato harissa fries and red curry mac and cheese.
Carroll credits Alex and Vanessa Harris for creating space for bebop — and its predecessors, including Root Note Food and Malika Canteen — to thrive. “Vanessa and Alex have created opportunities for lots of people,” she said. “It’s been cool to watch.”
The question most pop-ups are used to hearing is, often, “How long are you here?” Carroll has an easy answer for that. “We’ll stay until they kick us out,” she joked. “Right now it’s indefinite and we hope we get to stay for a good, long time.”
Have ramen, will pop-up
Weems Pennington has been slinging ramen in Frontier Lounge’s kitchen since last summer. And while you can currently order from Weems Ramen at Frontier from 6 to 10 p.m. every night but Tuesday, the pop-up started on a smaller scale, with Pennington originally just popping up once a week.
After Frontier had issues staffing its kitchen, though, there was a hole to fill. “Neil [Frontier’s owner, Neil Lykins] said, ‘Do you just wanna be here all the time?’ I started thinking about it and [realized] it would be really nice not to have to move my stuff around anymore,” said Pennington.
And six-nights-a-week Weems Ramen was born.
Like bebop, Weems Ramen doesn’t have a specified end date for its pop-up duration. “It’s kind of like, I just keep showing up and he keeps saying, ‘Thanks for being here,’” said Pennington.
And while the stability of a semi-permanent spot — Pennington agreed that Weems Ramen could be classified as a residency — is nice, the in-betweenness of a pop-up has its setbacks. “I don’t have all the amenities of being in a restaurant,” he said. “We don’t get food deliveries. I still go grocery shopping.”
Pennington says the hassle is worth it, though, when he sees a repeat audience coming in for his ramen.
Pennington first started making ramen a few years ago when he lived in Salt Lake City. “There was this little market beside my house that made fresh ramen noodles and I was like, ‘That’s so cool,’ ” said Pennington. “I would go there and stock my freezer with these noodles. And then I started researching and making broth … and then my girlfriend bought me a little hand crank noodle maker. So I started making noodles.”
Pennington said that customers will come into Frontier specifically for his food and that the pop-up’s hours are dictated by what kind of folks are coming into a bar to eat at night. “At 10 p.m., nobody will ever order food. They’ve all moved on to bigger and better things,” joked Pennington.
“We’ve built this kind of mutual thing where it’s almost like Weems Ramen has its time at Frontier Lounge and then Frontier Lounge has its time and I’m filling these gaps for them,” he said.
Pennington said that he’s starting to see more places around town that have kitchen space but not kitchen staff — a potential boon for people looking to launch their own pop-ups. “There are lots of opportunities for people who want to do this,” said Pennington. “It’s just that, I don’t know who wants to do it.” He added that pop-ups rely a lot on “hype” and that can be hard to maintain. “We have slow days now and we just have to … hope that the busy days offset the slow days.”
Pennington has tried a variety of menu iterations, landing on a small-ish menu that highlights the main event, ramen. “We were trying to have more of a ‘restaurant menu’ with different things other than ramen,” he said. “I realized that it was making it so we weren’t focusing on the ramen as much and that was kind of bumming me out.”
Now, Pennington serves up shoyu and miso ramen and a mushroom side dish, with the occasional special item.
Pennington takes pride in his ramen and like any business owner, he works to balance his business goals. He’s recently implemented online ordering — but he doesn’t really talk about it.
“I’ve always had this thing where I prefer that [in-person] is the way that people eat my food,” he said. “I would rather them come and see this beautiful bowl of ramen that we’ve spent so much time trying to figure out how to make.”
At the end of the day, though, Pennington wants people to enjoy his ramen however they can.
“I never wanted to be the pop-up that’s sold out in 30 minutes,” Pennington said. “I just want people to try my food.”
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