Plans are moving ahead for Wilmington’s second Potbelly sandwich shop.

The new restaurant will be located at 6818 Parker Farm Drive in a single-story brick building formerly occupied by SunTrust Bank. The shop, which will be the second Potbelly in Wilmington, “means everything” for the chain’s continued growth in the Cape Fear region, said Brent Brouse, who owns the local Potbelly restaurants with his wife, Michele. 

Plans for the upfit for the new Potbelly location were submitted to the city of Wilmington this week and are set to be considered by the city’s technical review committee later this month, Brouse said Friday.

Bringing Potbelly to the Mayfaire area is something Brouse said he’s been working on for years. Even before the SunTrust branch closed in 2020, he was in discussions to bring a restaurant to the site.

Brouse was drawn to the location because, as a Landfall resident, it’s an area he frequents on a daily basis. He also sees Mayfaire as a bustling trade area that will provide strong traffic for the restaurant. Brouse said he hopes a new Harris Teeter gas station under construction nearby will add to existing traffic volumes. 

Adding another location will also make restaurant operations in Wilmington more efficient, Brouse said.

“Having one store is a challenge,” he said. “As you start to add scale, things actually get a little bit easier because you're able to pool resources. You're able to get better pricing with vendors. You're able to share employee resources based on the ebbs and flows of the business.”

Now, with the upfit plans submitted to city officials, it feels like they’re “finally nearing the end of being able to begin,” Brouse said. He hopes to secure approval from city planners this month and begin renovations at the start of September.

The upfit and construction work is expected to last about three months and, if everything goes smoothly, Brouse said he plans to open the new store in December.

“It’s a pretty extensive buildout,” he said. “It’s not easy nor is it cheap.”

The renovation will include converting the former bank’s vault into a cooler, consolidating the bank's four-lane drive-thru into a single lane and installing a dumpster pad and a grease trap.

At 3,020 square feet, the new restaurant will be one of the largest Potbelly locations nationwide, according to Brouse. Most Potbellies range in size from 1,200 to 2,000 square feet. It will also be one of the only locations to include a room that can be used for meetings or birthday parties, Brouse said.

Brouse and his wife have signed a franchise agreement with Potbelly, a Chicago-based chain, to bring at least 13 Potbelly shops to North and South Carolina. The couple opened the first of these locations at 2525 S. 17th St. in Wilmington in July 2020. Other locations in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, New Bern and Greenville are currently in the works, Brouse said, but finding prime locations that are accessible, visible and high-traffic has been a challenge in Wilmington and across the Carolinas.

“My biggest obstacle is just finding quality spots,” he said. “There's just not a lot of great inventory out there.”

But he’s continuing to search for spots in the Cape Fear region where he envisions up to five Potbelly restaurants.

“We're going to continue to expand whether it's Monkey Junction or Leland or Porters Neck or Ogden or College Road or even downtown,” he said. “We are actively looking for sites in market.”