On a Friday morning in May, Stan Jones checked his bank account to see if he had gotten paid. Jones and other kitchen staff of The Friend’s Table — a popular, upscale comfort-food restaurant in downtown Fayetteville — were supposed to receive their wages that day. Nothing showed up, he said.
The next morning, on Mother’s Day, he checked again. Still, no paycheck. Concerned and confused, Jones and a few other members of the kitchen staff who also reported not being paid returned to The Friend’s Table on May 10 to ask the owner, Portia Grady, about their missing compensation. In response, she called Fayetteville police and told the dispatcher the employees were trespassing.
“She was like, ‘Well, can y’all go out front? You know, I’ll be out there in a minute,’” Jones, who worked as a chef in the kitchen, told CityView. “Well, she comes out, she’s on the phone, and she’s like, ‘I’m gonna need y’all to step outside,’ which we didn’t know at the time that she had called the police and said that we were trespassing. We’re employees of a company that you employ us through. How are we trespassing?”
Grady acknowledged calling the police in an interview, and CityView obtained the report, but said she did so because she felt “threatened” by the confrontation. She repeatedly denied that she had not paid the employees and expressed confusion over the encounter. She described the event as an “attempted protest,” and claimed to have evidence that she had paid them for the hours they had worked.
“And so I’m not sure where that misunderstanding came from,” Grady said. “But instead of having a conversation or a peaceful dialogue, they came in as a unit. And you know, prior to them, I had an all-female culinary team, and so me and two other chefs went inside, and so we’re getting barged in and attacked by five big grown men, made us very uncomfortable, who were not saying anything audible … There was no dialogue, no conversation. And it made us very uncomfortable and uneasy, especially given that the violence that’s downtown is insane.”
According to Grady and Jones, no one was arrested, but Fayetteville police officers gave the employees a no trespass order, barring them from entering the restaurant during the daytime. They could still enter at night to cook for the upstairs rooftop bar in the Kress Building, where the restaurant occupied the ground floor.
Grady later claimed that charges had been filed against the employees, though CityView was unable to locate court documents to support this; Jones said he had not received anything from law enforcement besides a report of the incident on May 10.
At the end of the week, the restaurant closed down permanently — a decision Grady said she made because of concerns over her and her other employees’ safety and well being. A ”for lease” sign soon appeared in the window of the first floor of the Kress Building.
The Friend’s Table stopped posting on social media, as did Grady, with the exception of a Facebook live video on May 11. In the video, she didn’t address the specific claims about withholding wages, but said the criticism amounts to her “character being assassinated.”
Meanwhile, Jones, who said he was speaking publicly on behalf of the unpaid staff, recounted his experiences on social media. His post quickly became viral, as did a video taken by the kitchen manager, Gee “Chef” Felix, both amassing hundreds of likes and comments on social media. The video shows the kitchen in disarray a few days after most of the kitchen staff were barred from returning there to work during the day, Felix says in the post.
The posts sparked public outrage and disbelief. Several people who commented on Jones’ original post and subsequent ones said that they or a family member had similar experiences while being employed by Grady. At the same time, Grady is facing a lawsuit for allegedly failing to pay rent at The Friend’s Table’s previous location in Fayetteville at Westwood Shopping Center.
From catering service to brick-and-mortar business
Grady is the owner and co-founder of the LLC FRIENDS Upscale Comfort Food. She began the business as a catering service before expanding it into a brick-and-mortar establishment with The Friend’s Table in 2021. Grady has been recognized for her role as a young, female entrepreneur and Black business owner. She was appointed as a board member of the Alumni Association at UNC-Pembroke, where she received her bachelor’s degree.
Since The Friend’s Table opened at its first location in the Systel Building, recently renamed the Dogwood State Bank Building, it quickly became a favorite for those looking for a trendy brunch spot. Dozens of videos on TikTok hype up the dining experience, documenting picture-perfect, Southern comfort dishes like chicken and waffles, while loud DJ music pulses in the background. The restaurant relocated to a bigger space in Westwood Shopping Center in 2023 with plans to continue expanding the business.
The restaurant moved yet again this year, taking up residence on the first floor of the Kress Building on Hay Street on March 20. The Friend’s Table replaced Breakfast with Tiffany, a breakfast and brunch restaurant that closed in late December after the owner died. The staff, including Jones and Felix, were retained to work at The Friend’s Table, and The Friend’s Table entered into an agreement with the Kress Rooftop Bar to provide small plates on nights when it was open.
In a video announcing the restaurant’s grand opening in the Kress Building back in March, Mayor Mitch Colvin, who co-owns the Kress Building and rooftop bar, stood next to Grady and proudly declared, “I’m Mitch Colvin, mayor of the great city of Fayetteville, and I’m excited today to welcome Ms. Portia Grady, The Friend’s Table Tiffany’s-edition, to our downtown Fayetteville. The vibe, the professionalism, the food, is great. We need you. Come join us in downtown Fayetteville.”
Colvin confirmed that The Friend’s Table was no longer a tenant at the Kress Building, but said he couldn’t disclose the reason for the lease ending. He said he did not know if it was related to the May 10 incident, but did not dismiss the possibility.
“I can’t really get into people’s personal agreement, but they are no longer a tenant,” Colvin told CityView on May 30. “I follow social media kind of like everybody else, so I saw some things between them and their staff, so I don’t know if that had anything to do with it.”
A history of complaints
This is not the first time Grady has been accused of not paying debts. She is currently facing a lawsuit for allegedly not paying the landlord of the business’ former location at Westwood Shopping Center. A complaint filed in the Cumberland County Superior Court on March 27 by the owners of the Westwood alleges The Friend’s Table only paid three months’ rent while leasing the space from May 2023 to December 2024.
The unpaid rent, as well as interest and other expenses incurred by renovations Grady’s business made while leasing the building, have cost the shopping center $768,653, according to the lawsuit. The Friend’s Table was court-ordered to vacate the premises by Dec. 2, 2024, according to an ejectment summary judgment included in the court documents. On Dec. 5, The Friend’s Table made an announcement on Facebook, which stated, “we are moving.”
Grady declined to comment on litigation, but said the move from Westwood was because of a dispute with the landlord over the lease renewal, not an eviction.
“We closed down in Westwood in December due to an amended lease that we just didn’t agree with,” Grady told CityView. “We didn’t want to sign so that kind of forced us to relocate and find a new home.”
Grady acknowledged dealing with litigation related to “pretty hefty repairs” she made while leasing property at the Westwood Shopping Center. The lawsuit claims Grady’s repairs and clean-up following her leasing cost the shopping center $51,699.
According to the North Carolina Secretary of State’s LLC database, Grady’s business, FRIENDS Upscale Comfort Food, was administratively dissolved by the state on May 27 for not filing an annual report — a requirement for North Carolina LLCs.
Problems emerge
There were signs of issues soon after The Friend’s Table opened in the Kress Building, Jones said. Though The Friend’s Table had been operating since March 20, it had only been open for about 24 days between March and mid-May when it closed, Grady and Jones said.
The employees also cooked for the rooftop bar during this time. Soon after opening, Grady had switched to a handwritten, self-reporting system for tracking hours, and that’s when employees first started experiencing difficulties in getting paid accurately and on time, Jones said. He provided CityView with text messages between him and the restaurant’s general manager reporting his unpaid hours.
“The first time we got paid, it wasn’t just one straight out payment, like they broke it up in the payments, which we were getting paid through Cash App,” Jones said. “And then like, either we had to beg them to, ‘Hey, where’s our money at?’ And then when they didn’t fully pay us, we had to go back and be like, ‘Hey, this doesn’t match my hours. We need the rest of our money.’ And then it took us another week out for them in order to fulfill that.”
Grady said she “encountered a lot of issues” upon moving to the Kress Building. She said she had switched to the self-reporting, analog payroll system because of a technical issue with the building’s wiring that prevented her from installing her desired electronic time-tracking and payment system. She claimed, after reviewing security camera footage, that employees were being overpaid for their self-reported hours.
Jones denied employees were trying to get paid more than they worked. He criticized Grady for not taking accountability for the employees’ concerns about compensation.
“Everybody can’t be wrong, and everybody can’t be out to get you at every turn,” Jones told CityView.
Other issues cropped up that raised Jones’ suspicions about Grady’s management. For example, he said Grady did not have a commercial food vendor or wholesaler, which is usually how restaurants get their food supply. He claimed it was because Grady owed vendors money.
“She’d go to Food Lion or the Sam’s or the Walmart; she was not going to any of the chef stores or using any of the big food outlets,” Jones said. “She was just running to the store to get stuff, and that was that.”
Grady confirmed she shopped for supplies at grocery stores, but denied that she owed any vendors money. She said she went to stores like Food Lion because they had products she couldn’t buy elsewhere, like certain kinds of noodles.
“It has nothing to do with vendor accounts,” Grady said. “I’m in good standing with Cisco, US Foods and all of that. In fact, throughout all of this, every one of my vendors reached out to me and said, ‘I cannot believe this is happening to you. We don’t want anything.’”
In an interview with CityView, Grady further accused the employees of verbally attacking her, the restaurant and customers. She described the employees as making “a lot of threats” and “very brutal” and claimed they were making threats that could have turned physical.
“They threatened the customers who decided to stay and dine and threatened us,” Grady said. “They sabotaged certain kitchen equipment, which was another reason I decided to pull out. Because I wasn’t sure that at any time I turned on the gas stove, it wouldn’t blow up. It got really, really nasty, really gruesome.”
Grady did not provide any photo or video evidence of this. In Felix’s Facebook live video on May 12, he enters the restaurant following The Friend’s Table’s use of it during the restaurant’s day hours, and shows the messy kitchen. A police incident report in the Fayetteville Police Department’s public database shows Grady reported trespassing shortly after Felix’s video on May 12, but the case is marked inactive on the report.
In the May 14 video, Felix shows the kitchen clean and in order, with the equipment packed up and organized in the restaurant. Felix, Jones and other staff said they had returned to the kitchen to clean and pack it up following The Friend’s Table’s closure.
“And the kitchen crew, the ones they ain’t pay, the same one they ain’t pay, is the same one that came in and cleaned this whole thing up,” Felix said in the video.
Grady said she is pursuing legal action in relation to The Friend’s Table and charges of theft and breaking and entering, but would not say if it was against former employees.
“I can’t say who it’s against, but I will say I’m not out to harm anyone,” Grady said. “I’m not out to attack anyone. I’m just responding. And it is pending litigation.”
Jones said neither he nor his colleagues had made threats, physical or verbal, against Grady or sabotaged the restaurant or harassed customers in any way. He said as far as he knows none of the kitchen staff had been sued by Grady.
“Why would we harass people that are coming in to spend money for us to make money? Why would we harass them?” Jones said.
Jones argued the backlash Grady was experiencing was primarily from the public, concerned residents and customers. “We didn’t make her unsafe,” Jones said. “She made herself unsafe.”
‘Trying to recoup and move forward’
Grady says her catering business is still operating, but she is ruling out opening up another restaurant or physical location of The Friend’s Table. She said she is considering opening up a food truck.
Grady confirmed she had to close another restaurant location on Murchison Road, The Garden Cafe, also in May. She said it was because of threats allegedly made against her by former employees following the payment dispute at The Friend’s Table.
“We were over there the rest of that week, but we closed down just because of our safety,” Grady said. “We just don’t feel safe.”
Jones said, although he’s focused on moving on, he feels it was important to speak up about the situation at his former place of employment.
“It’s been stressful, trying to manage, trying to find a new job and start over again,” he added. “It is really stressful. And, on our end [the goal] is to make sure that she doesn’t get away with this, to try to hurt anybody else . . . not only have we lost jobs, lost wages, people are behind in bills now, and right now it’s just trying to recoup and move forward.”
As of June 4, neither Jones or Felix said they have received their compensation since the May 10 dispute. Both filed for unemployment and made a complaint with the North Carolina Department of Labor.
“Being that it was a short period of time we were denied unemployment and the labor board is doing an investigation,” Jones said. CityView was unable to confirm this with documentation; Jones said it was communicated to him in a phone call.
Jones said he’s worked in the restaurant business for more than 30 years. In that time, he’s seen a lot. “And this is probably the worst of it,” he said.
Government accountability reporter Evey Weisblat can be reached at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
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