Local News

New to the Neighborhood: August 2026

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Tuesday, 25 August 2026

Written by Staff Report

There’s something new around nearly every corner. Across the area, new businesses are opening their doors, bringing fresh places to eat, shop, gather and explore while adding to the community’s ever-changing landscape. Here’s a look at some of the businesses that have recently joined the neighborhood.

THE SHOE
FSU, 1200 Murchison Rd.
uncfsu.edu/campus-life/dining
The Shoe is an outdoor hub that can accommodate up to six food trucks, offering a rotating lineup of dining options to Fayetteville State University Students.
Students starting in the Fall 2026 semester will be able to use their campus meal plan funds to purchase food from participating food trucks. Conveniently situated adjacent to the residential quad, the space has also been designed as an outdoor social gathering spot for students, staff, and visitors.
Food truck schedules, hours and meal plan instructions can be found on their website under Dining Options. Weekly or daily vendor lineups will be shared on Instagram and Facebook via @FSUBroncos.

BLANC COFFEE ROASTERS
417 Hay St.
910-302-1296
https://www.personalbestcoffee.com/
Blanc Coffee Roasters isn't new to Downtown Fayetteville, but it's now in a larger location. Originally located at 103 Person Street, next to Sweet Palette, they have now moved to 417 Hay Street. This new location puts them closer to Segra Stadium and expanded seating.
While beloved for its minimalist charm, the smaller space limited seating. Their larger space also allows for an enhanced roasting setup. Focusing on small-batch single-origin coffees, this gives them more capacity for their in-house roasting operations, bean distribution, and retail sales space.
Although they are in a new space, their core philosophy remains the same: using ethically sourced beans and roasting in-house. Their menu still highlights meticulously crafted pour-overs, classic espresso options, and house-made seasonal syrups.

BULAVARD KAVA LOUNGE
5855 Yadkin Rd.
910-491-0079
https://blvdkava.com
The Bulavard Kava Lounge opened its doors in March 2026 and is an upscale, non-alcoholic botanical bar and gathering space. Non-alcoholic and alternatives to traditional nightlife have grown in popularity over the past couple of years, and Bulavard Kava Lounge is the perfect blend of both as it brings South Pacific kava culture to Yadkin Road.
The interior is dark, with moody lighting and velvet lounge seating paired with street-art-inspired graffiti murals and neon accents—the perfect relaxed environment for remote work, social gatherings, or late-night hangouts. Beverages are prepared using the traditional methods of kneading noble kava root powder in cold water and served in traditional coconut shells.
The menu features traditional kava shells, house-crafted flavored kava mocktails, loose-leaf teas and herbal botanical brews.

THE VENDOR LOFT
5472 Trade St., Hope Mills
ww.facebook.com/thevendorloftllc
Opened since June 27, The Vendor Loft is a collective boutique market and retail space in historic downtown Hope Mills. The space was created to give independent local artisans, makers, and small business owners a permanent storefront to sell their products.
The space features a wide variety of products, including homemade crafts, custom home decor, boutique apparel, local artwork, artisanal candles, gift items and seasonal goods. The Vendor Loft is situated on Trade Street and in a prime location for shoppers strolling downtown Hope Mills and its nearby shops and eateries.

Keep An Eye Out For….

TEXAS ROADHOUSE
Sandhills Gateway Projects at Gillis Hill & Raeford Rd.
A second Texas Roadhouse has been announced for the Sandhills Gateway project, a scheduled 35-acre mixed-use development, at the intersection of Gillis Hill and Raeford Rd. The development is planned to have restaurants, retail, and residential areas. The area has recently been cleared, and construction is underway. There has not been any announcement as to the projected date of completion.

Dining Guide: Sports Bars

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Tuesday, 25 August 2026

Written by Staff Report

Fall is right around the corner, and it brings with it football season. One of the best fall traditions is gathering friends, grabbing some food, and cheering on your favorite team. When you are looking for a wall of big screens, a plate piled high with wings, and a lively crowd to celebrate every touchdown, this list of local sports bars is ready for game day.

KICKBACK JACK'S
5081 Morganton Rd.
910-223-7676
www.kbjacks.com
Kickback Jack's is a lively, contemporary neighborhood sports tavern and grill that is designed specifically for game-day viewing and social gatherings. They cover NFL Sunday games, college football, NBA, college basketball, MLB, NHL hockey and NASCAR. With their large-screen, high-definition TVs that are strategically placed throughout the entire dining area, you won't miss any of the action.
They also offer a full menu that features classic game-day food including scratch-made wings, burgers, pizzas and seafood, with over 20 beers on tap and local craft brews.

BUBBA'S 33
500 Westwood Shopping Ctr.
910-223-2601
www.bubbas33.com
Bubba's 33 is a high-energy, family-friendly sports restaurant known for its scratch-made comfort food and sports viewing setup. The restaurant is a spacious, open-concept design that caters to sports enthusiasts, families and large groups. Dozens of large-screen TVs line every wall while broadcasting everything from NFL games to college football and other regional sports.
A dedicated dining room is set up for families, with an energetic sports bar area with a full-service bar. Their food menu pairs perfectly with any sport and features fresh ingredients made in-house, including beef burgers, hand-tossed pizzas, wings and seasoned fries. An expansive draft and cocktail selection complements your meal with a wide range of ice-cold beers on tap, as well as signature cocktails.

MAC'S SPEED SHOP
482 N. McPherson Church Rd.
910-354-2590
www.macspeedshop.com
Mac's Speed Shop is the place to go for slow-smoked barbecue, craft beer, and to watch live sports. Mac's doesn't feel like a typical sports bar, offering a high-energy, open-air environment with plenty of TV screens and top-tier comfort food.
Whether you sit in the main indoor bar area or choose to sit in the spacious outdoor patio, you won't miss any game action on the multiple large flat-screens that are strategically placed in both areas. The menu goes well beyond your standard pub grub and features award-winning pulled pork, brisket, wings and burgers.
They also feature a dozen local and regional craft beers on tap, domestic favorites, drink specials, and signature cocktails.

NOVA RESTAURANT & SPORTS BAR
5900 Yadkin Rd.
910-868-5559
www.novarestaurantfay.com
Nova is a casual neighborhood sports lounge that offers a relaxed hangout space that is focused on watching sports, interactive games, and nightlife. Their multi-purpose environment blends classic sports bar amenities with lounge entertainment.
There are several large flat-screen TVs set up around the bar and seating areas for prime sports viewing. The space also includes pool tables, music, and a dedicated cigar lounge area. Their menu serves all the great sports bar staples, including wings, burgers, and sandwiches.

TWIN PEAKS
1891 Skibo Rd.
910-500-6090
www.twinpeaksrestaurant.com
Twin Peaks is a sports lodge designed with sports fans in mind. It features a warm, cabin-inspired atmosphere paired with immersive game-day viewing setups, set up so that every seat in the house has a great sightline to live sports.
Dozens of high-definition flat-screen TVS stream all the major sports, including NFL, college football, NBA, fight nights, and racing. Enjoy the game with a draft beer poured into a 29-degree ice-cold frosted mug. Their menu offers beloved comfort food such as wings, burgers, smoked meats, flatbreads and other shareable game-day appetizers.

CAROLINA ALE HOUSE
161 Glensford Dr.
910-860-1114
www.carolinaalehouse.com
Carolina Ale House designs an extensive audio-visual setup with a spacious layout built especially for live sports entertainment. Featuring over 50 high-definition TVs throughout the venue, ensuring great game visibility from every table, booth, and seat. There is a main dining room, expansive bar, and an open-air patio area.
Their diverse tap and beverage selection includes over 60 beers, both national brands and regional craft brews, and local North Carolina favorites. The game day menu includes sports bar staples, including jumbo wings, craft burgers, pizza and other shareable appetizers.

GROUP THERAPY PUB & PLAYGROUND
1906 Skibo Rd., Ste B
910-222-7574
www.grouptherapy.fun/fayetteville
Group Therapy Pub & Playground combines sports viewing with interactive entertainment in their multi-zone sports setup. Their outdoor courtyard and patio area features a large projection screen used for major game-day watch parties, including NFL games and championship events.
Inside, the central bar area is surrounded by high-definition flat-screen TVs that stream major sports broadcasts and game feeds. Group Therapy's menu is perfect for game viewing and sharing, featuring shareable appetizers, burgers and other handheld snacks. The highlight of their beverage setup is a 36-tap pour-your-own tap wall. You can pay by the ounce or pour sample sizes or full pints of craft beer, ciders or domestic beer.

RUDINO'S PIZZA & GRINDERS
3350 S. Peak Dr., Hope Mills
910-423-5555
https://rudinos.com/
Rudino's Pizza and Grinders is located beside the Millstone 14 theatre in Hope Mills and is known for its relaxed, welcoming game-day environment. Built as a hybrid family restaurant and casual sports tavern, it is a great laid-back venue to watch live sports.
The main sports bar and dining room are surrounded by high-definition screens that broadcast NFL matchups and regional sports. Their outdoor patio is also a great hangout on game day. Their menu does not disappoint with oven-baked grinders, pizza, calzones and wings. Their beverage selection includes draft beers on tap from regional craft breweries, domestic brews, and seasonal selections. Cocktails and wine options are also available.

HALFTIME HANGOUT SPORTS BAR
2080 Club Pond Rd., Raeford
910-248-6141
www.halftimehangoutsportsbar.com/
Halftime Hangout Sports Bar is a veteran-owned, family-operated neighborhood sports restaurant designed to bring a dedicated game-day go-to. The venue provides a fan-friendly environment with flat-screen TVs broadcasting major live games and watch-party events. Their kitchen features classic sports bar staples, elevated with a signature Louisiana-style flavor, including gumbo, catfish and Po' Boys.
They serve a full selection of cold beer on tap, craft cocktails, and game-day recipes designed to pair perfectly with their food.

Girl, Ignite Your Fire! Gives Fayetteville teens room to lead

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Tuesday, 25 August 2026

Written by Tiffany Haywood

The Zenaida Cranford Mentor Mentee Mentorship Program’s inaugural St. Croix cultural exchange connected Fayetteville girls with peers through leadership, service and mentorship that continued beyond the summit.
One strong characteristic of leadership is seeing a problem, knowing the solution and not waiting for someone else to provide it.
That lesson became real in St. Croix when a Fayetteville girl, who arrived expecting to participate in the Girl, Ignite Your Fire! Teen Summit & Cultural Exchange, noticed an adult volunteer had been pulled away from the registration table. She saw the gap, knew what needed to be done and stepped in, welcoming fellow attendees, taking names and handing out packets.
No one had trained her for the role. She had simply listened, observed and understood enough to act when the moment called for it.
For Zenaida Cranford, that moment was a glimpse of exactly what she wants young girls to discover: confidence in who they are, the ability to connect with others and an understanding that leadership is something they can put into action.
That vision traveled across the water this summer when Cranford, a St. Croix native, brought a seven-member North Carolina delegation from Fayetteville to the island for the inaugural June 1-6 summit. There, they joined 38 girls from St. Croix for leadership development, wellness, community service and cultural exchange.
But Cranford’s goal went far beyond taking girls somewhere new.
She wanted them to experience what could happen when they stepped outside what was familiar and built relationships with girls whose lives could look both different from, and surprisingly similar to, their own.
For Cranford, St. Croix was a natural place to begin.
Not only is she from the island and familiar with its culture, but as summit partnerships developed, she began discovering unexpected connections between St. Croix and North Carolina.
People they encountered had military ties, including connections to Fort Bragg, and Cranford also noticed similarities between the communities through agriculture.
Cranford said those connections continued appearing throughout the planning and summit experience, reinforcing just how much the two communities had in common.
She also made sure the Fayetteville girls did not spend the week only with one another. Younger participants were placed in the summit’s Sparks group, while older girls joined the Flames, mixing them with St. Croix participants in their age groups.
At first, Cranford said, the Fayetteville girls were nervous and stayed close together. By the second day, they were beginning to move outside those familiar circles.
The exchange also gave the girls a chance to compare educational opportunities. St. Croix participants talked about options available through universities in the Virgin Islands, while Fayetteville girls explained early college opportunities available in North Carolina.
“It gave them an opportunity to expand their portfolio, expand their network, relate to other girls their ages, at the same time exploring different cultures and identities,” Cranford said.
Those conversations were part of her larger plan: Every experience needed to teach something. That intention extended to community service.
During a beach cleanup, the girls collected six bags of trash from the West End, including debris hidden deeper within vegetation that some local residents said they had not realized was there.
Sometimes a fresh set of eyes sees what familiarity can overlook.
But Cranford did not want the girls to walk away saying only that they had picked up trash. Community partners helped them understand how waste can make its way into the ocean, harm marine life and ultimately affect a food source the community depends on.
“It’s not just about picking up trash,” Cranford said. “What is the meaning behind picking up trash?”
“Everything we did was tied into an educational purpose,” she said.
The impact of the summit did not stop when the Fayetteville delegation returned home.
During a speed-style mentor-mentee matching session, girls rotated through eight-minute conversations with mentors and later selected their top choices. Cranford said 36 girls in the Virgin Islands were ultimately paired with mentors for continued relationships.
Girls also exchanged phone numbers and social media information, and some of those connections have continued beyond the summit.
For Cranford, that continuation matters because the trip was never meant to be a one-week experience that ended with a flight home.
“When we give kids an opportunity, especially our teenagers, they will take advantage of the opportunity, as long as the opportunity is good,” she said.
Cranford said opportunities like these can give young people room to discover their identities, gifts and talents while building networks that can stay with them as they grow.
She wants Fayetteville residents to be proud of the teenagers “we are raising together as a collective city.”
Girl, Ignite Your Fire! is part of the work Cranford leads through the Fayetteville-based Zenaida Cranford Mentor Mentee Mentorship Program, which serves girls ages 12 to 17 through mentorship, leadership development, wellness and community engagement.
The free program maintains an open-door policy throughout the year and meets three times a month.
But for Cranford, the larger measure of success may be what happens when no adult is standing nearby giving instructions.
It is the girl who sees the open registration table and steps in.
The girls who look beyond the visible edge of a beach and find what others missed.
The young women who travel somewhere unfamiliar, build relationships, serve and return home with a broader view of who they can become.
Those are the girls Cranford wants Fayetteville to see — not simply as participants in a program, but as part of what the city is producing in its young people today.
For more information about Girl, Ignite Your Fire! Or the Zenaida Cranford Mentor Mentee Mentorship program, visit https://www.facebook.com/ZCMMMP

(Photo: Participants with the Girl, Ignite Your Fire! summit in St. Croix pose for a photo during a beach cleanup. Photo courtesy of the Zenaida Cranford Mentor Mentee Mentorship Program)

Greater Fayetteville Chamber relocates, presents upcoming programs

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Tuesday, 25 August 2026

Written by Mahalia Cooks

In their mission to advance and promote local businesses and build a strong, prosperous community, the Greater Fayetteville Chamber has been making some major changes. Two of those changes are their recent move to Skibo Road and the creation of a new Business Training Center.
In the last week of May, the Chamber completed their move to 1636 Skibo Rd., to a new facility with around 3,600 square feet of working space, a notable upgrade from their previous 1,400-square-foot office space at Bronco Midtown. The goals were to offer a bigger, more dynamic business facility to accommodate increased membership and to give every staff member their own office area. The organization has gone from 600 members to about 1,200, making it one of the largest Chambers in the Carolinas.
“The Chamber has been looking for a new, larger location where each of our staff could have a dedicated office to work from,” said Nat Robertson, CEO and president of the Chamber. “The Greater Fayetteville Chamber currently has a staff of eight focusing on our Advocacy, Education and Networking events. It was a priority for our Board of Directors to locate the office in a location that was visible and easy to find, for our members to visit and attend events. We were also looking for an office that could be used as a venue for our business education programs.”
The Business Training Center is dedicated to hosting programs and expert speakers that serve the needs and interests of both Chamber members and the community itself. The new location offers two classrooms for such programs, one with a capacity of 20 individuals and the other with the ability to hold 85.
Offerings that members can participate in include business education classes called Success Seminars, a business advice podcast called “Inside the Chamber Vault,” and the Fayetteville Young Professionals program. FYP is a relaunch of an existing initiative that was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Robertson, it will be returning on Thursday, Oct. 22 and is for members ages 21 to 40.
The Chamber’s new location is central to the business community, making participating in Chamber events easier for business owners.
The relocation and establishment of the new center were brought to life through a partnership with the Fort Bragg Federal Credit Union and donor contributions to the Greater Fayetteville Chamber Foundation.
“We are fortunate for a strong partnership with Fort Bragg Federal Credit Union, which owns this location. Their Board of Directors and our Board of Directors thought this would be a good fit for the Chamber. A lot of it was timing and strengthening partnerships; that’s what our Chamber is great at,” said Robertson. The donors’ names have been posted on the wall of the Business Training Center to acknowledge the roles they have played.
The Chamber has put other advancements in motion this year to provide the best possible services for their members. In late April, they transitioned membership platforms, switching from ChamberMaster to GrowthZone to continue expanding their membership without experiencing operating system limitations. This change gives Chamber members a more efficient platform for communication, enhanced profile management and a better overall user experience.
“When making the decision to move platforms, we wanted to offer our members better connectivity and information about what we are doing for them,” Robertson said. “Our old system was a good one, but this one offers better back-end features and allows our members to be more interactive with our programs.”
Every year, the Chamber hosts over 150 events and programs to allow business owners to network and gain valuable resources that help keep their enterprises thriving. Some of their regularly occurring events include the Chamber Coffee Club, Member Orientation and Toastmasters. These programs serve a range of needs for Chamber members, including strengthening their public speaking skills, enabling them to brainstorm and exchange ideas and helping them become involved in committees.
The Chamber holds numerous larger events and celebrations alongside their recurring programs. Here are this year’s Signature Events.
State of the Community 2026
Held on Tuesday, Aug. 25 from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., this annual event gathers Fayetteville and Cumberland County leaders, including Mayor Mitch Colvin, to discuss the current state of the community and plans for continued improvement. It was open to nonmembers and hosted at the Crown Expo Center at 1960 Coliseum Drive.
Eighth Annual Valor Public Safety Awards
This awards ceremony recognizes first responders throughout Fayetteville and Cumberland County, honoring them for their bravery and initiative as local heroes. It will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 9 from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. The location is Manna Church at 5117 Cliffdale Road.
Candidates Forum
The Candidates Forum platforms state representative and county commissioner candidates, allowing them to share their views and keep voters in the know. It will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 13 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Fayetteville Technical Community College on 2201 Hull Road.
Greater Carolina Rock ‘N’ Boil
The annual Oyster Roast is a networking event that allows business owners to enjoy good food and make connections with their fellow Chamber members. In addition to the oysters, attendees can chow down on barbecue and a Lowcountry boil. The event will be held at Segra Stadium at 460 Hay Street on Thursday, Oct. 22 from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The last two quarters of the year will bring many events to keep members learning and engaged, benefiting their personal and professional development. “We continue to focus on our members, providing programs and resources that benefit small and large businesses,” Robertson said. “From our Consumer Protection Division to ENGAGE Magazine, we recognize that we are here for our members.”
To learn more about upcoming programs from the Chamber, call 910-483-8133 or email info@faybiz.com. You can also visit them in person next door to the Fort Bragg Federal Credit Union and near the intersection of Yadkin Road.

(Photo: Nat Robertson, CEO and President of the Chamber, said, "It was a priority for our Board of Directors to locate the office in a location that was visible and easy to find, for our members to visit and attend events.")