
Gavin Stone | Daily Journal
The former barber shop two stops down from Ace Hardware on Raleigh Street will be the location of Stephanie Al-Zubaidy’s new coffee shop, Axe to Grind.
HAMLET — When Stephanie Al-Zubaidy would take U.S. 74 from Charlotte to Wilmington, she never saw much along the way. But one day, after a business opportunity in the mountains fell through, she decided to pull into downtown Hamlet and caught a glimpse of potential.
In March, Al-Zubaidy purchased the former barber shop on Raleigh Street attached to the Hatchet House axe-throwing range, which she also purchased in April. Since then, the North Carolina-native has purchased the former pawn shop on Hamlet Avenue, and will close on the former Birmingham Drug Co., which had been vacant across from the Hamlet Depot since August 2019.
“When I went to Hamlet I just found it to be a lovely spot that doesn’t have a lot of life right now but could be potentially a fantastic place,” she said. “The 74 corridor is very sleepy but there’s a lot of interesting things that happen along there and I thought, ‘that’s a town that could use some life.’ I have some time, I have some inclination, and I have a lot of friends who are interested in helping me do something.”
“It’s a great spot, and it’s halfway between Charlotte and Wilmington and I can imagine that it could be a great stop-off place for people who are going back and forth,” Al-Zubaidy continued.
The most definitive plan for her new venture into Hamlet is a coffee shop at the barber shop location, which will combine the Hatchet House and coffee shop under the name Axe to Grind. Al-Zubaidy expects to have the coffee shop open by August.
However, she’s not much of a coffee drinker herself.
“I’m really more into feeding people, bringing people together and forming a community and coffee is just a great way to do that because people like to have a place that’s comfortable in their town that they can just pop in and feel comfortable being there,” Al-Zubaidy said. “I lived in Belgium for a long time and so I want to bring back the feel of just a neighborhood, coffee shop bakery. It’s going to be more European-style but we’re going to focus on things that locals will like and enjoy.”
Last year, Al-Zubaidy and her husband sold their business, the Charlotte-based Catawba Research, a clinical research organization. For her second career, Al-Zubaidy wanted to follow in the footsteps of her mother and aunt who were bakers and catered events when she was young. With Axe to Grind, she wants to include baked goods made by locals alongside those made in-house, offer light food like sandwiches, soups, salads, and some specials.
“That’s the goal: to have a lot of local people involved, local history involved … I want it to be a community effort,” Al-Zubaidy said.
She has considered opening condos or AirBnB’s in at least one of her properties, but she’s certain one of them will become a distillery in the near future. She has had discussions with Lisa Lowery of Carolina Beach, a former contestant on the Discover Channel reality show “Moonshiners: Master Distiller,” about Lowery running it.
“We’re pretty certain that we’ll put a distillery somewhere,” AL-Zubaidy said.
Other ideas with her new properties include an escape room, a free library, and she’s floated the idea of bringing the community together to construct a dog park.
The big picture
Al-Zubaidy has reached out to a number of friends and past connections from the Charlotte area that she plans to bring into the fold in Hamlet.
One friend, Suzanne Altobello, Ph.D., a professor of Marketing at Fayetteville State University, will incorporate Hamlet businesses into her curriculum for her Master of Business Administration students’ marketing management course. As part of the course, students will work closely with — but not work for — several Hamlet businesses and organizations to develop and deliver detailed marketing plans that the businesses themselves will then implement. Hamlet will be the only focus of her 8-week summer course that begins July 1, and then will be included in her fall and spring courses along with businesses from other parts of the region, according to Altobello.
This summer course will have about 20 students who will work in teams of three or four to complete each project. The incentive for the students is that their projects for their respective clients will be entered into a competition at Fayetteville State. There is no static template for the students to work from, Altobello explained, but rather their education is built on their ability to do what’s best for the organization they’re partnering with.
“In the MBA class, what [the students] would be doing is working on everything from a current SWOT analysis of what the business or organization is doing well, who their target markets are, who their competitors are, what are their current marketing and promotional activities, what are the recommended ones that will improve that business,” Altobello said. “We’re not short-term employees, but rather we are oftentimes doing the things that either small businesses need to do to apply for an SBA loan or the things a company simply doesn’t have time to do as they’re growing.”
She added that for many businesses, the students will have a much more up-to-date understanding of marketing strategies, especially as it relates to social media and Google analytics, than the businesses they’re working with. In these instances, the best way the students can help is through a tutorial.
“For example, if a company has never used Facebook advertising or doesn’t have an Instagram account … It may be more tutorial based, like the students create a manual for the business … or we provide some education on different digital tools that might be helpful for the company,” Altobello said. “It really depends on the company’s needs.”
Partnering with the city
The current projects planned for the students include Al-Zubaidy’s coming businesses, the Hamlet Depot & Museums, and the Richmond County Chamber of Commerce, according to Altobello. She said that expanding to include other businesses would be done through the Chamber, which would serve as the “gatekeeper.”
Hamlet City Manager Matt Christian said the city is “fully on board” with the idea of integrating Hamlet’s offerings with Altobello’s marketing classes. The partnership with Al-Zubaidy was an “out of the blue” thing for the city, Christian said, but he sees it as a step in the right direction.
“I think that what Stephanie really brings to the table is a significant amount of vision and experience in business development,” Christian said. “Her [connections], for her to bring those folks to Hamlet to try to make some things happen really just highlights the potential that we all see in Hamlet together.”
“This is an entrepreneur seeing an opportunity to invest and be successful in a small town environment,” he continued. “I think the model where you try to establish kind of a social hub with the people that live here and a place that’s attractive to people that visit and those groups can intermingle, and that’s how you really start to develop what we call a ‘sense of setting.’”
In working with Christian and Hamlet Depot & Museums Director Mechelle Preslar, Al-Zubaidy has made clear that she wants to do everything she can to breath life into Hamlet’s downtown area.
“I think that my success will hinge upon everyone else in the town being successful and I would love to see some growth in the community,” she said.
Preslar said she hopes these new businesses and activity in the city will bring in more interest that can help fill even more storefronts.
“It thrills me that these empty businesses are being bought by people that have a vision and a plan to open the businesses,” Preslar said. “It’s what Hamlet needs.”
To support the Richmond County Daily Journal, subscribe at https://www.yourdailyjournal.com/subscribe.
Reach Gavin Stone at 910-817-2673 or gstone@yourdailyjournal.com.