Doherty’s Irish Pub is coming to SoCo in downtown Pittsboro

By Eric Andrews

Pittsboro, NC – We are getting a new restaurant at 56 Sanford street. This is between the Mod and the ABC store. We just signed a long term lease. We’re proud to announce that Doherty’s, which is an Irish pub, is coming to SoCo Pittsboro. They currently have two locations. One in Cary and one in Apex.

Doherty’s Irish Pub will be located in the SoCo Pittsboro location (photo by Gene Galin)

And they’ve been fantastic to work with. This is a longer lease so the devil was in the details. They have to customize it to make it workable as an Irish pub. We have a beautiful, a phenomenal building that the Stafford’s built, but it’s a vanilla box. It’s a shell of a building. Doherty’s has to make it into what their vision of an Irish pub is.

These guys are absolutely amazing. There’s so many people from Pittsboro that visit their Apex restaurant. They’re known for bangers and mash, beef stew, shepherd’s pie. They’re really known for their brunch that’s very popular, and a lot of people go there for their brunch.

I have been told that about 80 percent of their sales is food and not alcohol. I had another client tell me that they have a whiskey club. You buy all the different whiskies that they have, and you get x amount of points and you get a cup, a mug or a t-shirt. But then if you get so many points, they put your name on the end of a barrel and put that up on the wall. So, that’s kind of cool.

Doherty’s Irish Pub entrance

They’re very astute business people. They read every letter of the lease, and they had good questions. And of course, the Stafford’s are excellent landlords.

We had we had lots of people that wanted that space. But it wasn’t a fit. We had contractual obligations with Havoc the brewery that we had to provide food. And we had some other provisions where we didn’t want them competing directly with our tenants. We had some things that just weren’t a fit; we had coffee shop, we had an ice cream place and everything. It’s like, no, that’s not what downtown needs.

An Irish pub is something that we’re very excited about. All the people that work here in our office are very excited about it. But the thing that we’re most excited about is these are just really good business owners and good people to work with.

They’re looking at having music venues in the area. They have a huge Saint Patty’s Day celebration. I am super excited because they sell Guinness beer. And they will have rugby on TV, which you can’t find. I can’t even get rugby at my house. So rugby on TV will be phenomenal to watch. I’m really excited about these people being here.

I’m so glad for Pittsboro and I’m so glad that we have the right tenant for the space