The Post and Courier reported that in December, a handwritten note appeared on the door of Charlotte's on Maybank. The restaurant had been open four months. The owner cited rising costs of running a restaurant, including what the note called "obscene" liquor-liability insurance. Ten weeks earlier, a few doors down in the same Harris Teeter-anchored shopping center at the corner of Folly Road and Maybank Highway, Maple Street Biscuit Co. had gone dark too, part of a chain-wide shutdown of fourteen locations after roughly seven years on the island.
Two storefronts empty in the same stretch within ten weeks is the kind of thing you notice on your commute and then forget by the next red light. What's worth slowing down for is what's replacing them, because it says something about where James Island's food scene is headed that neither closure did on its own.
Two closures, one pattern of tenants moving in behind them
Maple Street's exit was a corporate decision made in Jacksonville, one of fourteen closures nationwide by parent company Cracker Barrel. Charlotte's exit was a local one, and its owner pointed to rising operating costs, including liquor-liability insurance. Different reasons, same result: two vacancies in a shopping center anchored by Harris Teeter, both facing Maybank Highway, both empty by the start of winter.
What's filling them are operators with a following built elsewhere. Caviar & Bananas, the gourmet cafe founded in 2010 near the College of Charleston, is taking over the old Maple Street space at 1739 Maybank Highway as its third location and its first off the Charleston peninsula. Owner Joe Caradonna told the Post and Courier the James Island store would mirror the downtown cafes, with expanded catering and possible evening hours, and that he expected a strong after-school and after-practice crowd. In a WhatNow report, Caradonna described James Island as "a totally different demographic" for a brand that had spent fifteen years proving itself downtown and at MUSC. The opening was targeted for May 2026, which means if you've driven past recently, there's a decent chance you've already picked up a sandwich there.
The old Charlotte's suite, listed separately as 1739 Maybank Highway Ste V, has been tied to a Five Guys opening, though no firm date had been confirmed as of the most recent reporting. A national burger chain moving into a spot vacated by a four-month-old independent restaurant isn't a surprising outcome. What's more interesting is that it's happening next to a fifteen-year-old local brand testing its first suburban location, in the same parking lot, in the same six-month window.
Two doors down, a bakery that skipped the guessing game entirely
Walk two doors past the Caviar & Bananas buildout and you land at 1939 Maybank Highway, in the space that used to be LB Sweets & Treats. Girl Nextdough opened its storefront there on October 17, 2025. It's run by Caitlin Schumacher, previously the executive pastry chef at FIG, and her father John McCormick. The concept didn't start as a storefront gamble. It started in 2021 as a weekend food truck parked on Signal Point Road outside Salthouse Catering, and it built a following there for years before the transition to brick and mortar.
That distinction matters more than the address does. Girl Nextdough arrived with four years of weekend customers behind it. Several of the names arriving on the corridor this year, Caviar & Bananas included, built their following somewhere else before taking a James Island address.
Folly Road is running the same experiment
The pattern isn't confined to Maybank. On Folly Road, the owners of CudaCo Seafood House, Shaun Brian and Chris John, recently opened a crudo bar serving seasonal seafood dishes and a curated wine list, another established local name extending its reach along Folly Road.
Further down Folly, the Publix-anchored Riverland Market at 1411 Folly Road is set to add The Oyster Tavern as a tenant, though an opening date hadn't been announced as of the latest listing. It's one more data point in the same direction: the corridor is filling in with seafood and wine programs, not just quick-service chains, and it's happening on both sides of the island at once.
Here's the shuffle laid out by date:
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| September 2025 | Maple Street Biscuit Co. closes on Maybank after about seven years, part of a 14-location chain shutdown |
| October 17, 2025 | Girl Nextdough opens its storefront at 1939 Maybank Highway |
| December 2025 | Charlotte's on Maybank closes after four months, citing rising insurance costs |
| Early 2026 | Caviar & Bananas confirms plans for its third location at 1739 Maybank Highway |
| May 2026 | Caviar & Bananas targeted opening date |
| Ongoing | Five Guys linked to the former Charlotte's suite, no confirmed date; The Oyster Tavern planned for Riverland Market on Folly Road |
What it actually changes about a drive down the island
None of this requires you to do anything differently tomorrow. But it does explain something that might have felt confusing if you'd only clocked it storefront by storefront. A shopping center that already holds Muddy Waters Coffee Bar and a Starbucks kiosk inside Harris Teeter is about to add a third coffee-forward tenant in Caviar & Bananas. That's not three competitors fighting over the same customer. It's a bet that residents will make more than one stop in a single small footprint, the kind of frequency you'd expect from a walkable food district, not a suburban strip built around one destination trip.
Add Girl Nextdough's sourdough program and, if the timeline holds, a bagel shop rumored for nearby Camp Road, and a two-mile stretch of James Island ends up running two distinct bagel concepts where neither existed eighteen months ago. Combine that with a seafood-forward Folly Road and the shape of the corridor starts to look less like a place you pass through and more like a place that used to require crossing the Ashley River bridge to find.
Down Riverland Drive, the same season is showing up outdoors
If Maybank and Folly are where the island eats, James Island County Park on Riverland Drive is where a lot of the island spends its Saturday mornings, and October's programming leans into the season. Naturalists are running marsh and plankton walks at the fishing dock, Palmetto Peaks Climbing has both beginner and lead-climbing sessions on the calendar, and there's a shark-tooth beach walk scheduled for October 6 alongside an alligator program on October 13. The bigger draw is still a few weeks out: the Holiday Festival of Lights opens November 13, with a preview fun run and walk set for November 11 and 12.
Between a shopping center rebuilding its tenant list and a county park gearing up for its biggest seasonal event, this is a fall where the everyday texture of the island is visibly shifting, not because anything dramatic happened, but because enough small, specific things landed in the same few months.
If you've lived here long enough to remember when a good oyster meant a drive across the bridge, the corridor's current shape is worth watching. And if you're the kind of person who likes knowing what's actually happening in a place before everyone else catches on, that curiosity tends to serve you well no matter what you're doing here next. Anjela Perry has spent more than two decades tracking exactly this kind of change across the Lowcountry, and if you ever want to talk through what's happening in your own corner of James Island, Let's Connect.
