by Ebony Morman

Cory Duran is good at coming up with ideas. Before he opened The People’s Market in 2017, he had plenty of ideas and as an entrepreneur, he materialized a few, including franchising two GNC stores and opening a cocktail lounge and a dive bar.

“I had a concept called Friar Tuck that was my first real introduction into the restaurant industry,” Duran says. “It was a dive bar with TV, sports, and bar food, but I tried to elevate it, and we did okay. Lack of experience probably didn’t help, but those lessons are what gave me the aspiration to start The People’s Market.” 

Duran leveraged lessons learned from running several small businesses, advice from friends in the industry, his self-proclaimed foodie status, and his penchant for ideas to create The People’s Market. His ultimate goal was to have a place where people could hang out, meet their neighbors, and enjoy a good meal. 

“One of the things that makes The People’s Market special is you never know who you’re going to bump into,” he says. “It could be your neighbor, it could be the person that you were standing next to in line at the grocery store, or it could be anyone. What we try to do is just create an atmosphere that allows people to either collaborate or just get along.” 

Now Duran is making it possible for more people to build community in a couple other neighborhoods in Charlotte with plans to expand The People’s Market to Myers Park, which is under construction, and then to lower South End. 

Unpretentious Palate spoke with Duran to learn more about how the neighborhood market became a safe space for people to eat, work, and play all day. 

Unpretentious Palate: What inspired you to open The People’s Market? 
Cory Duran: I walked away from corporate America, where I worked in investments for Merrill Lynch, and I didn’t really know what was next. During that time, I kind of discovered a new talent. I started writing books. I wrote a couple of books, and I did a little bit of ghostwriting. When I wrote, I wrote at Amelie’s, and I hung out at Rhino Market & Deli. Those are just two of my favorite local concepts. I always felt like it was something that I could create that would just kind of fill the void between those two concepts, where you can be an all-day place. You can come and have your coffee in the morning. You can get your work done, and then once you get your work done, you can eat lunch, you get some more work done, and then it’s time to drink. So the People’s Market just kind of morphed into this place where people come and hang out all day. 

UP: Where does your love for food come from? 
CD: I grew up here in the South, and growing up here, a lot of my food preferences weren’t very elaborate. It was just Southern cuisine. I had this opportunity to work in New York, while still in corporate America. That’s where I received a more well-rounded introduction to food from different cultures. I didn’t have my first medium rare steak until I was 25 years old. I ate it well done my whole life. I thought, “This is what real food tastes like.” From there, my palate developed. If I have a skill that I have kind of honed in, it’s just having a palate that touches different people. It’s not a biased palate. I think people bring their biases to whatever they’re eating. And I just never did that, not in my adult life. I don’t mind trying new things, taking that cultural experience, and making it my own when I’m dining. So I always kind of appreciate that.

UP: Describe your approach to curating the menu.
CD: We recently changed our menu. We went in with the intention of making it smaller and it actually got bigger. Honestly, the inspiration is easy: we give the people what they want. It comes from an inside joke between me and our chef Decan Oval. When people come in and they ask for certain things, they request certain things, or even modify the things that are on the menu, we try to make it easier for them. So we’ve kind of morphed into this Cheesecake Factory of deli market menus. It’s about touching on all the things that people crave. We’re definitely American comfort food. But then, we’re also trying to do innovative things and bring ideas that aren’t necessarily seen everywhere. One thing we’re really proud of is every week we add a new item as a weekly feature, and it’s usually something that you’ve never seen. We did a special that was croissant avocado toast. We also did a burrito as a pho, a phorito. We put everything that’s in a bowl of pho into a burrito, and then we put the broth on the side, which made it like a French dip. 

UP: Which parts of the menu do people love? 
CD: Our breakfast does really well. We’re proud of our breakfast, but our breakfast is simple. It’s just good bacon, egg, and cheese. We make everything in-house. So I think that connects with people. Our biscuits are homemade. When you come into The People’s Market, you can see our baker, Audrey Linek (a student at Johnson & Wales), making our biscuit right in front of our guests. Also, we wanted to do better as a business by focusing on our [non-breakfast items]. So our pizzas are made from scratch, and we are really excited about our new pizza menu. Our newest item is our piadinas, which are pizza sandwiches. We did a special and it was successful, so we added it to the menu. And I get that food costs are up so we’re not in the business of overcharging people. At the end of the day, we want people to come in and actually feel good about the meal and not walk out here saying, ‘Man, I paid a lot of money.’ We just try to make good food at a reasonable cost. That’s been built into our DNA.

UP: What have you learned from being in Charlotte’s restaurant industry? 
CD: My philosophy is to always listen to your customers. Too often people go into the business with their own prejudice and they want what they want in respect to a concept or how the business could work. Sometimes you have to respect what a neighborhood wants or what your customers want. If you do that, in theory, you should be okay. It may be cliche, but we’re The People’s Market, and that’s what we do. We listen to people, we make changes. We adjust the menu, and we adjust the pricing, because we want our customers to be happy. That’s always been my North Star. 

UP: What challenges have you endured in the restaurant business? 
CD: We started rough. I’m never afraid to tell that story. It wasn’t fun the first six to eight months, but we adjusted. We made some changes, and then when we made those changes, things really started to connect. When things started working, COVID-19 happened. It shut us down in 2020, along with just some other logistics things that happened with the building. It took awhile to find a way. But we did find a way, with some help from customers who were able to come in and help out with some of the financial pieces that were missing to help us get back open. And we reopened in Elizabeth in 2022. And honestly, things just kind of just took off and been well for us. 

UP: How do you make sure you stay true to The People’s Market mission of being a family-friendly, community gathering place to eat, work, and play?
CD: We hire people who respect that philosophy. It’s about the people, so I try very hard to ensure that the business is not about me. I want people to come into The People’s Market and say, ‘They have good food, they have a good atmosphere, and I just love The People’s Market.’ That in itself, is part of who and what we are. Those are the things I fight for behind the scenes to make sure we stay on brand there.