Legion’s executive chef Gene Briggs, who worked at Blue in Uptown for 14 years. Photo courtesy.

In early June, Chef Gene Briggs tells me that his wife, Martha, jokingly reminded him just hours earlier that he does have a family at home. What he means to share is he’s busy. Briggs, who burnished his legacy in Charlotte’s dining scene during his time at Blue in Uptown, now oversees front- and back-of-house operations at Legion’s popular taprooms in Plaza Midwood and SouthPark. He also developed the menus and designed the kitchens for two locations opening this year: the Trolley Barn Fermentory in South End, whose multiple food stalls will incorporate fermentation and culinary creativity, and a 22,000-square-foot brewery on West Morehead Street. 

When the pandemic struck, Briggs and Legion leadership focused not just on how to survive, but how to come out better on the other side. They contracted a mobile canning service to get flagship IPA Juicy Jay on grocery store shelves. “Within a month,” Briggs says, “it became the best-selling craft beer in Harris Teeter.” The new Morehead facility will allow the brewery to increase production from 6,500 to 100,000 barrels a year. As the company grows, Briggs is making sure the city’s taprooms remain technique-driven dining destinations.

Here’s what a day  in his life looks like.

8 a.m. Briggs starts the day by clearing out the texts and emails that came through overnight. “We’re getting ready to open a new restaurant at the beginning of July and then another one in September,” he says. His correspondence “has to do with anything from construction to the menu to employee questions, or something from one of our existing concepts.” Every day, he has to respond to a litany of requests and concerns: The day before we spoke, for example, he found out about an issue that prevented construction crews from installing kitchen equipment, which will set construction back a couple of days. Once he’s tackled his inbox, he can start the day.

10 a.m. “About 10, 12 years ago, I started powerlifting,” Briggs says. “Our contractors introduced me to some people that were closing their gym to open a new one, and I bought a whole bunch of equipment, so I can work out in my garage.” He has plans to compete once events resume, but that’s not what got him into the sport. “I’m 57 years old right now, and to get any longevity in this business, you’ve got to make sure that you’re in shape and ready to go all the time.” After about an hour of training — the chef’s “me time” — he heads out to the taprooms.

11 a.m. “I like to start out at the Plaza taproom,” Briggs says. “That has really taken off this year. We’ve actually doubled food sales there in the last couple months.” He praises Chad McMullen, one of his sous chefs from SouthPark, for turning the Commonwealth Avenue location into a food destination. “Have you ever seen the kitchen at Plaza?” Briggs says. “It’s literally a closet.” 

Chefs at the new locations will have more space. Briggs designed the kitchens himself, and with restaurants shut down during the pandemic, he gathered ideas online. The Trolley Barn’s menu and aesthetic are inspired in part by the diversity of food at Grand Central Station. For the Morehead location, Briggs “designed a very specific wood-burning grill that has two vertical spits — like for shawarma, gyros, tacos al pastor — and then a horizontal split right over the fire,” he says. “We’re going to have a big wood-burning pizza oven there, as well.”

1 p.m. Occasionally, Briggs will swing by Legion’s corporate office, but he calls his desk “the least-used piece of furniture in that entire office.” He’ll often head to the SouthPark taproom instead. The massive space on the ground floor of Capitol Towers has seen consistent crowds since it became the neighborhood’s first brewery in fall 2018. “We never really slowed down for Covid,” Briggs says, despite a short closure and new safety precautions. “We just had our best month ever last month, in May.” Here, in the relatively quiet afternoon hours, he works with his team to develop recipes. Many dishes on the new locations’ menus first appeared as specials in SouthPark. “We’ll talk about, ‘What’s something that you want to learn?’” he says. “So we’ll come up with a dish, and I’ll teach them how to do it.”  

Despite the many claims on his attention, Briggs takes his mentoring role seriously. His former sous chefs include 5Church’s Jamie Lynch and higher-ups with Wolfgang Puck and Sean Brock. Legion owner Phil Buchy likes to say that he wants the company to be the last place anybody works, a mindset Briggs says reflects his own management style. He believes their commitment to mutual respect with staff — treating them “like humans” — is why they haven’t had the hiring problems that have plagued the rest of the industry lately.

5 p.m. Once dinner gets rolling, Briggs works closely with kitchen staff. “Generally, I’ll be working the outside expo position, checking food quality,” he says. Briggs helmed the kitchen at the now-closed Blue in Uptown for 15 years, and he says he doesn’t miss much about the fine dining world. Legion offers flexibility. He can “turn that switch on” and make the same fare he became famous for at Blue, while also serving up the burgers and chicken sandwiches that make customers come back multiple nights a week. “We use almost all the same ingredients that I did at Blue,” he says. “We’re just doing it in a way to make it accessible to everybody.”

11 p.m. On weekend nights, Briggs will stay a little late, so he can pick up two of his daughters, Olivia and Eve, from their work as hostesses. (The other, Gabrielle, works as a server.) When they all have time off, they’ll head to Asheville for the day or take their three dogs out for walks around town. On typical nights, though, he’ll come home, have a beer and a sandwich, and catch up with Martha. He’ll watch TV — Netflix’s Ugly Delicious is a favorite — for an hour or so before heading to bed. “If I get six hours,” he says, “I’m good.”