As sure as the rooster crows, so are the stovetops lit once more at one local Columbus diner.
Ranch House Diner, at 807 Alabama St., reopened on Tuesday to serve breakfast from 5:30 to 10:30 am. The diner closed in June because of increased operating costs and a lack of help, owner Sammy Sullivan said.
Sullivan told me he felt a calling to reopen his business in response to what he sees as a decline in the East Columbus business community.
“I just felt like I needed to fight longer and harder because East Columbus seems to be dying one store at a time,” Sullivan said.
If fresh coffee and breakfast don’t suit you and yours, you might like this. Zachary’s restaurant owner Doug Pellum plans to open Zachary’s Tavern in the old Elbow Room building at 418 Second Ave. N. Pellum bought the place in 2019 as an event space. He told me that the pandemic caused a serious decline in business and closed it in January.
“COVID just had a huge effect on the business,” Pellum said.
The tavern will open for special invitations only in a few weeks and Pellum hopes to open to the public in a month. It will also feature a high end, chef-driven menu of constantly changing specials with a few regular items like steak, chicken and seasonal fish.
Pellum doesn’t want to hype up the tavern too much until he’s ready to open but will provide more concrete updates once the new business is ready to serve its first customers.
“I would like to release something more in a couple of weeks, but we just are not ready to get it out there yet,” Pellum said.
If you feel a slight tightness in your chest after those delicious updates, you might consider scheduling an appointment with Northern Mississippi Vascular Care at 425 Hospital Drive. The cardiology practice held a ribbon cutting and grand opening for its new clinic on July 29.
Owner Dr. John King described the addition to his practice as an office-based lab for diagnoses and special procedures to repair arteries.
He had a soft opening in March but delayed fully opening the clinic until he felt he and his team were ready to serve more patients.
“We weren’t doing very many cases to start with,” King said. “There’s a learning curve with this, how you safely take care of a patient in an outpatient lab.”
In other news, Traffic on the corner of Fifth and Main Street was blocked on Tuesday as workers lifted up a new green and white Bank Of Commerce sign on the north side of the building.
Columbus market president Mark Crigler told me that he rather enjoys the new sign.
“I do like the way it looks,” Crigler said. “There will be additional signage similar to what you see on the north side, on the west side, probably installed next week.”
So much for smooth traffic downtown, I guess.
Finally, we move on to the land of the Bulldogs. Lifehouse Coaching, a personal therapy and life coach business located at 103 Miley Drive in Starkville will launch a new six-week group coaching program in September for three specific categories of women according to a Facebook post made on July 21.
Life coach Tawnya Dukes will be running the sessions. She said group sessions will help women who are leaving toxic relationships, those who are in their later years looking to find meaning and mothers who homeschool wanting to learn time management skills.
“This is new specifically because we’re bringing people together who have a specific life experience so that they realize that they’re not alone,” Dukes said.
Well, folks, that’s all for now. Check in next week for more goings on in business!
Dispatch reporter Grant McLaughlin writes about business openings and closings, as well as other unique business news. Send business tips to [email protected].
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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