On Friday, April 15, The Forks Cafeteria, a Wake Forest institution for 16 years and counting, will have a new owner. But steady customers and the organizations that rely on the Forks for their breakfasts, lunches and dinners, for their meeting rooms and their large annual banquets should not fear. Almost nothing will change. There will no messing with the Sunday lunch buffet.
“He’s got all the recipes and all the cooks,” Karen Winstead said today about her expectation that all the favorite foods will remain the same, though she said the new owner will probably begin adding some new dishes in time.
Karen and Don Winstead are this week in the complicated process of handing over the reins to David Greenwell and his father-in-law Jack Mercier, both of Wake Forest, who will take ownership on Friday. Greenwell has been the executive chef at the 42nd Street Oyster Bar in Raleigh for 15 years and wants his own restaurant. The Winsteads will provide help and consultation for 30 days
Greenwell is very interested in being a part of the Wake Forest community, Karen Winstead said. He and his wife, Tammy, a nurse at WakeMed North’s Women’s Hospital, and their children, Ethan, 6, and Tatum, 8, live in Wake Forest off Jones Dairy Road and the children attend the Franklin Academy Elementary School.
Leaving The Forks will be an enormous change for the Winsteads, who have worked together with almost no vacations in the 17 years they have run the cafeteria. Asked about plans for the future, Karen Winstead said they had “not said one word” about their plans, though they do intend to be more involved with their grandchildren, twins 2 ½ years old. They are selling both the business and the building because “we did not want to have to deal with any problems.”
Before the cafeteria on Brooks Street, Don worked in Raleigh and Karen operated the seminary cafeteria (the land now a parking lot) on Wingate Street, a place filled with seminary professors, townspeople, visitors and local club meetings every day but Sunday. She ran it for 17 years, but in the spring of 1999 Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary decided to close that cafeteria because of a new plan for the campus.
The Winsteads decided to replicate the success of the seminary cafeteria with one of their own and purchased the dilapidated building that once housed Keith’s Super Market – “When we bought it, it only had four walls and 12 poles,” Karen Winstead said – from Phil Stroud. Months later and substantial renovations later, The Forks Cafeteria opened with instant success. “We’ve had more business every year than the year before,” Karen said.
Part of that success is that they do not charge any nonprofit group that wants to use one of the small meeting rooms. A number of church groups have monthly meetings here, and there is a long list of the civic and interest groups who meet and eat here: Wake Forest Rotary, Community Council, Wake Forest Optimists, Wake Forest Lions, Wake Forest Civitans, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Wake Forest Camera Club, a Christian motorcycle group and a book club. The Koinonia Foundation has its annual banquet there as does the Trentini Foundation, and it is always host for the Wake Forest Community Christmas Dinner. Expect all that to continue.
The familiar faces will also be there behind the counter and in the kitchen. The 14 employees will stay on, and with the exception of one person, they have all been at the Forks for 11 years.
Running a cafeteria open six days a week plus a catering business is complicated. Karen said it is different every day. She and Don are introducing Greenwell to all their catering customers and urging them to continue to use the Forks for catering.
(Next week the Gazette will speak with Greenwell for what he sees is in the future for the Forks Cafeteria.)
(Frank Keith worked for two local grocers, Jesse Hollowell and S.W. Brewer starting in 1903, but in 1913 began renting space on South White Street for Keith’s Super Market. By 1961 his two sons, Edwin and Bruce, were in the business with him and the store was in the space now occupied by the Wake Forest Coffee Company and the staircase that leads to the Artists’ Loft. Frank Keith was renting from both Tom Arrington and Wait Brewer.
(In the early morning hours of Jan. 18, 1961, a passing newspaper deliveryman saw flames and called out the fire department. It was difficult enough fighting a raging fire in the darkness, but that was compounded by the sleet and freezing rain that coated the street, the hoses and the firemen.
(Soon after the fire, Frank Keith said he and his sons would build a new building, and Keith’s Super Market opened in a small brick building on an extension of Brooks Street that was dirt or had been dirt until shortly before. The family doubled the business size, and when the store closed in 1993 a grandson, Jimmy Keith worked there. He followed in Frank’s footsteps as chief of the Wake Forest Fire Department and would become the department’s first fulltime paid chief in 2003 when the department had 36 volunteer firemen, 12 full-time paid and eight part-time paid firemen.)
