TIME OUT

Hector’s in 1989, via The Daily Tar Heel.

A few years ago, a burst pipe forced the town of Chapel Hill to advise its residents not to use any water until a contamination issue could be resolved. All businesses on Franklin Street were asked to close until the following morning. This presented a particular challenge for Eddie Williams, owner of Time Out, a Chapel Hill institution known for its Southern cooking and 24/7 opening hours—because he didn’t even own a lock. He hadn’t closed the restaurant since he’d first opened it. Eddie went out and bought a bicycle chain, just for that night, and Time Out has not used it again since.

201 E. Franklin Street has been home to more than one late-night Chapel Hill institution since its construction circa 1930.¹ In October 1968, Hector’s opened in the first floor of the building, which had been occupied since the ‘40s by a laundromat called University Cleaners,² and quickly became popular with students for its cheap Greek food and late closing hours—sometimes as late as 5 A.M. At the time it was founded and managed by Peter Galifianakis. In 1973, it was sold to brothers Steve, Mike, and Michal Lias, natives of Kalymnos, Greece.³ Most famous were its double cheeseburger on pita and its slow-roasting lamb, which students nicknamed “the human thigh.”

For a more detailed account of students’ fondness for Hector’s around this era, see this article by Randy Walker in a 1982 edition of The Daily Tar Heel.

In the late ‘90s Hector’s was managed by Elia and Maria Nicholas, who alluded to its reputation as a late-night hotspot when they referred to it in The Daily Tar Heel as “the party place after the party”.⁴ By the early 2000s, Hector’s was co-owned by Jose Constantino⁵ and Juan Batista⁶ and continued to win “Best Burger” student polls for several years straight.

Hector’s’ final day at 201 E. Franklin Street was February 11, 2006, after the East End Martini and Oyster Bar expanded into the second floor of the building, which Hector’s had moved into in 1995⁷ after a fire in 1991 destroyed the first floor.⁸

In the period between 1995 and 2006, the first floor was occupied by a variety of businesses: Carolina Coffee,⁹ Caffe Trio¹⁰, Blue Marlin Pub¹¹, Club 9+9¹², and California Pizza Cafe¹³ among them. East End Oyster and Martini Bar opened on the first floor in late 2001, offering an upscale bar environment at relatively affordable prices for students. In 2006, it took over both floors, with the upper floor becoming an elegant restaurant and the bottom floor becoming a rowdy, bar-like environment frequented by undergraduates. It closed in 2014, after more than twelve years at the corner.¹⁴ The lease was then taken over by Time Out, moving from its iconic location at University Place.

East End Oyster and Martini Bar in July 2008, via Yelp.

Time Out was founded in 1978 by Eddie Williams and has remained a Chapel Hill institution since. Eddie was born, raised, and attended Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill, and his family is deeply integrated with the school and the Carolina community. His father, Jack Williams, was Sports Information Director of UNC Chapel-Hill from 1966 to 1975, managing publicity work for the wildly successful basketball program under Dean Smith.¹⁵ Dean Smith, too, was a close friend of the Williams family, and Eddie grew up traveling with the team and helping his father in the press box.

About a year after his graduation, he found out that the Pizzaville he’d been working at through college under Maurice Jennings was being turned into a Biscuitville. Jennings, founder of the chain, had been a mentor to him in college, and sold the location—a building in University Square, now the location of a Target—to Eddie. This was the foundation of Time Out. His wife Valerie—whose father was assistant football coach at UNC—came up with the name, which exemplified their deep familial ties to sports at Chapel Hill. In the 47 years since he has worked at Time Out almost constantly—seven days a week, sometimes thirteen or fourteen hours a day.

Eddie Williams’ father, Jack, with coach Dean Smith at UNC-Chapel Hill.¹⁶

It was a time when Chapel Hill was dominated by small family-owned shops and restaurants—Eddie names The Rams Head Rathskeller, Zoom Zoom Pizza, Varley’s, and Ye Old Waffle Shoppe among his favorites. Until 2014, Time Out remained in its original location on University Square, right next to Granville Towers and able to welcome crowds of students coming home on late nights. Though it wasn’t open 24/7 immediately, the shift happened only a few years into Eddie running the business—he noticed that there was a market for restaurants open at three or four in the morning, not only for partiers but for visitors, nurses, and doctors at the UNC hospital system that could use home-cooked food more than anyone.

Some of Eddie’s warmest memories of running Time Out are hearing the stories of people coming in late at night, just looking for somewhere to go that wasn’t a waiting room. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, when North Carolina issued a curfew for businesses that ordered them to close at 10 PM¹⁷, Eddie negotiated with the city to set up a table at the door where employees could take orders and bring out food without customers ever having to step inside the building.

The interior of Time Out’s old location, at University Place.¹⁸

In the last couple of years Eddie has taken a step back from Time Out, as he spends more time with his children and grandchildren. When asked if he would ever consider selling, however, Eddie is steadfast in his response. He would not. It’s his life’s work, the project of decades, creating not only a restaurant but a memorial to the Franklin Street he remembers. One that is filled with community, with sports, with Carolina pride, with that small-town feel that has characterized Chapel Hill for as long as anyone can recall.

Eddie thinks of the countless patrons that have come with their children and grandchildren, reminiscing on their college years and introducing a new generation to this relic of old Franklin Street, old Chapel Hill. Eddie loves to describe these interactions—it inspires pride in him to be so involved in the legacy of Franklin Street and the people of Chapel Hill. “It’s made it to be a great life,” he says, and it’s easy to see why.

The interior of Time Out’s current location, at 201 E. Franklin St, via Time Out.

ENDNOTES

1. Historic Chapel Hill ↩︎
2. The Daily Tar Heel, 07-07-1948, Page 4 ↩︎
3. The Daily Tar Heel, 06-12-1986, Page 14 ↩︎
4. The Daily Tar Heel, 06-17-1999, Page 29 ↩︎
5. The Daily Tar Heel, 02-08-2001, Page 2 ↩︎
6. The Daily Tar Heel, 02-13-2006, Page 1 ↩︎
7. The Daily Tar Heel, 01-09-1995, Page 1-4 ↩︎
8. The Daily Tar Heel, 02-06-2006, Page 1 ↩︎
9. The Daily Tar Heel, 09-14-2001, Page 11 ↩︎
10. The Daily Tar Heel, 06-17-1999, Page 2 ↩︎
11. The Daily Tar Heel, 12-03-1999, Page 2 ↩︎
12. The Daily Tar Heel, 08-21-1995, Page 5 ↩︎
13. The Daily Tar Heel, 08-31-2001, Page 4 ↩︎
14. East End via Facebook ↩︎
15. Time Out ↩︎
16. Time Out ↩︎
17. Chapelboro ↩︎
18. RDU Gonna Eat That? ↩︎