by Kristen Wile

The rooftop of The Royal Tot, with its skyline view, will feature prominently in its reopening. Kristen Wile/UP

After announcing its closure last month, The Royal Tot will reopen under new ownership. Gregory Walter has purchased the tiki bar and is planning to operate it on a limited, walk-in only schedule for the next several weeks to train staff before a grand opening in early July.

Walter is currently in real estate in Charlotte, but has a professional background in the bar industry. He spent years working in event promotion in Long Island, and will use that background to make The Royal Tot a bigger destination for special events, beyond hosting private parties.

“We’re going to be hosting our own parties and different events and a wide range of things,” Walter says. “We’ll have speed dating, we’ll have a culture night. We’ll have a lot of different specials depending on the night or different themes to bring people in the door and make The Royal Tot a place that everyone wants to go. My goal is to make The Royal Tot a go-to place for when you want a good party.”

Currently, he’s focused on hiring a broader staff to ensure consistency across visits, and his days are spent largely interviewing potential bartenders to make up a staff of nearly two-dozen behind the bar. According to Walter, the bar will remain heavily tiki focused, but there will be more cocktails on the drink menu made with non-rum spirits, and the menu will be sorted by its base spirit.

Walter has been wanting to return to the bar industry, but says the process of building out a space held him back. As a friend of former owner Scott Gadd, Walter says he saw the amount of work and passion that went into creating the bar and saw its potential — especially that of the rooftop.

“If you look at rooftop bars across Charlotte, a lot of your rooftop bars are in Uptown and they’re in the skyline looking out over the suburbs,” Walter says. “We’re one of those bars that is just outside of the city skyline and looking directly at the city skyline. When you see the sunset over that skyline from the rooftop, it’s an amazing view, a great atmosphere, and it’s a great place to have a drink and have a good time.”

After spending part of his life living in Asia, Walter says he loves the tropical flavors of tiki drinks. The bar is named after the daily rum rations once given to sailors in the British Royal Navy — a longstanding practice that ended in the 1970s.

The bar will be running but under training over the next few weeks, with limited seating available on a walk-in basis. A grand opening will take place the weekend after the Fourth of July.