Citing the COVID pandemic, this popular Columbia barbecue restaurant closes in the Vista
Another popular restaurant has shuttered its doors in Columbia’s Vista in the wake of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic.
The Pot Smoker BBQ, located at 931-A Senate St. in the heart of downtown Columbia, closed shop last week.
Owner Philip Pye confirmed to the newspaper Monday that it never fully recovered from the impact felt during the pandemic.
“We gave it 19 months, almost two years, to see if it’d return to some normalcy,” he said. “It’s nothing like it was before COVID. The whole area is just kind of dead.”
The Pot Smoker’s original owner Bobby Boggs and family opened the first location in North Augusta in 2013 prior to Pye opening a franchise location in Columbia in 2017 and another one in Aiken in 2018.
For awhile, Pye said the Columbia location helped sustain the restaurant in Aiken.
But everything switched when lockdowns and the pandemic hit the Palmetto State. He struggled to find employees, he saw far fewer patrons roaming the area and even fewer customers walking through his doors, he said.
“I kept on waiting and hoping,” Pye said.
Prior to the location being a Pot Smokers joint, it was known as The Mamas and The Tapas restaurant. While the restaurant’s name was an eye-catcher, it derived its name from the original owner Boggs’ cooking method. The Columbia location was rated as one of the best barbecue restaurants in town, according to hundreds of Google and Facebook reviews.
The Columbia area has seen a number of bars and restaurant closures since the COVID-19 pandemic began last year, including the Flying Saucer, Yesterday’s and Taco Sushi, which Pye also owned.
Pye said his current plans are to focus on the Aiken franchise restaurant which seems to be thriving. He said he has no immediate intention of reopening another Columbia restaurant, though he isn’t fully ruling it out yet.
This story was originally published November 8, 2021 at 1:30 PM.