Just two years after opening their first location in Cary, Corbett and Mary Shope will open Corbett’s Burgers & Soda Bar on South College Road this week.
“Wilmington is a great town,” Corbett Shope said. “We think it’s the perfect spot for a second location.”
Shope served for several years as a general manager for Chick-fil-A before coming up with the idea for Corbett’s. His restaurant serves burgers, hot dogs, seasoned waffle fries and milk shakes. And oh yeah -- soda. Lots and lots of soda.
In fact, Shope will carry 300 different brands of bottled soda. He says when he first started selecting sodas for his Cary store he anticipated carrying only five or six. But then he kept coming across more and more to try, and that’s when he decided to incorporate into the restaurant's concept the idea of having hundreds of bottles to choose from.
Corbett’s also serves fountain soda and will have rotating kegs of several root beers and birch beers on tap. Customers can select any of the 300-plus sodas to be prepared as an ice-cream float. In addition to floats, Corbett’s serves a variety of milk shakes, including the Rootana, a root beer and banana concoction.
Corbett’s burgers are fresh, hand-pattied and char-grilled. One of the most interesting, according to Shope, is the Gouda morning burger which is topped with Gouda cheese, a fried egg, bacon and a drizzle of maple syrup.
Turkey and veggie burgers are also on the menu, as well as homemade toppings such as chili, slaw and pimento cheese. There are two types of hot dogs: Nathan’s all-beef dogs and North Carolina-made Bright Leaf pork and beef dogs. Both are deep fried and can also be wrapped in bacon.
The family-friendly restaurant is filled with red booths and red bottle cap bar stools that line a long wooden bar. Black and white photos and soda memorabilia are found throughout.
Corbett’s Burgers & Soda Bar is located at 1016 S. College Road and will be open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
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