Months after Tupelo Honey’s mysterious disappearance from the Paladen food court, questions linger.
Why did the Paddock return around the same time that Tupelo packed up its belongings and headed back downtown?
An employee working at the revived Paddock suggested, in an unofficial statement, that the staff turnover stemmed from an unpleasant rapport between management and employees in 2015-2016.
When pressed on this matter, Michael Brownlee, the Resident District Manager for Bon Appétit at Furman, insisted on quite the opposite. Brownlee said working with the Tupelo Honey associates was a wonderful partnership, and the decision to leave was mutual for all parties.
Despite it being Tupelo’s first venture on a college campus, Brownlee sided that breaking into the higher education market is a difficult task: “…unfortunately there were some experiences that were not up to standards,” he added.
Given that Furman provides students with pre-paid cards for food, tipping comes as an afterthought.
But, according to Brownlee, students not tipping Tupelo’s servers had nothing to do with their decision to leave. Brownlee rebutted the speculation that Tupelo did not make a return on investment when students used their swipe cards to pay.
Brownlee did not elaborate on how the tipping dilemma will work from this point forward, only that it was “… approached differently this year based on what was learned last year.”
For now, Brownlee is hopeful that the constant menu rotation and small-plate concept at the Paddock will please customers– but Tupelo’s biscuits still leave a nostalgic taste in certain students’ memories.
“I will definitely miss the Tupelo Honey biscuits and the black bean burger… but to be honest, I like the new Paddock menu better. It has way more options and the dessert choices are so funny and delicious,” Claire Pullan ’18 said. “10/10 would recommend the new Paddock over Tupelo Honey.”
On the other hand, no one will forget the heaping baskets of warm biscuits that once made the dinner table at Furman feel like home.
