Lell’s Cafe serves home-cooked meals with community support

By Anna Douglas

douglasa@mytjnow.com

Lell’s Cafe is open for breakfast and lunch Monday through Saturday. Owner Lell Trogdon started the business in November with the help of donors from the community. Photo by Stephanie Eaton • eatons@mytjnow.comIf we are what we eat, Rock Hill’s Lell Trogdon is on both ends of the spectrum. 

She’s a little ham and Brie cheese French connection sandwich, a little mozzarella and roasted red pepper “tastes like summer” dish and a whole lot of authentic Southern Duke’s mayonnaise. 

And her Cherry Road restaurant, Lell’s Café, is a reflection of her varying tastes and attitude.  The café opened near Winthrop University in November, even after six banks turned down Trogdon’s request for a loan.  

“I walked up to the cliff and I did what I always do,” she said.  “I didn’t look, just jumped.”

She opened the breakfast and lunch restaurant with three “angel” donors and a slew of supporters who bought in—both in principle and with financial backing—to the idea of a community-supported restaurant (CSR).

Customers enjoy a meal, taking advantage of the breakfast and lunch menu offered daily. Photo by Stephanie Eaton • eatons@mytjnow.comIndividual investors say they are on board for the good food and the good person Trogdon is.

“We all just love her to bits,” said friend and CSR member Marie-Claire O’Reirdan.  “It’s about two things.  Above all else, it’s about Lell.  Then it’s about local, sustainable food.”  

O’Reirdan said she heard about the CSR model being successful with produce from local growers, but never with restaurants, until Lell’s.  She and Trogdon said they are unaware of any other Rock Hill or Charlotte restaurants using the CSR model.    

‘Sit down, shut up’

At Lell’s Café, the food and Trogdon’s personality are inseparable.  During the typical lunch rush, customers may hear what Trogdon and her staff call “barking” coming from the kitchen.  

If things aren’t going just right, such as the grill not working quickly enough, the “barking” begins. 

The café, set up with an open kitchen visible from the dining room, is like Trogdon’s personality: What you see is what you get. 

Her toughness is buffered only by her mostly white apron, which is embroidered with a purple “Lell’s” logo.  

She greets customers, regulars and first-timers with a friendly yell from the kitchen.  But hungry people are just as likely to hear “thanks for coming in” as they are “sit down, shut up and eat what I put in front of you.”  

It’s not mean, it’s just “Lell being Lell,” her work crew said.  

Connection to Cupps

The cafe opened up an opportunity for local food lovers and farmers, by purchasing supplies from businesses around the Rock Hill community. About 80 percent of Lell’s breakfast menu uses sustainable food. Photo by Stephanie Eaton • eatons@mytjnow.comLell’s operates on a multi-tier individual investment system ranging from members who give $50 to $5,000.  In return, those people are allotted varying amounts of credit to eat and drink coffee at the café.  

At start-up, the only debt Lell’s has is in the 36-month lease-to-own contract for three pieces of restaurant equipment.  

Not bad for what Trogdon calls “round two” of an earlier endeavor called Cupps, a restaurant and coffeehouse that closed in May 2008 after being open only 10 months.  

Lell’s customer base is essentially the same crowd from Cupps, O’Reirdan said, a testament to how well-liked Trogdon and her culinary creations are.

“Cupps’ great advantage was Lell,” she said. 

As a sales representative for Counter Culture Coffee in the Charlotte area, Trogdon met then-Cupps owner, Chuck Robinson, as he was preparing to open in 2007.  She was fired from Counter Culture and had the choice to stay in the coffee wholesale business with another roaster or help Robinson open Cupps.  

Ready to be back in the kitchen, Rock Hill was the next stop for Trogdon. 

 “What happened at Cupps is what allowed me to have what I have now,” she said.  “There’s a rhythm to everything.”

Phoenix Cafe

Feeding people is caring, she said, and caring is a family affair for the 50-year-old Biloxi, Miss., native.

“My sister’s a pediatrician and I feed people.  We both care for people,” Trogdon said.  “The way I do it is with food.  I’ve always done that.”   

Cupps’ short tenure on Cherry Road across from Winthrop, however, came suddenly and shocked both employees and customers.  

Trogdon helped Cupps staff members get jobs through local connections, but found herself not as employable partly because of age discrimination, she said. 

“All of 2008 went by with me unemployed and earning minimum wage,” Trogdon said.  “And all of 2009 was unemployment and working part-time for minimum wage.” 

One weekend in the summer of 2008, she and Cupps colleague Serena Stout hammered out a business plan for a new restaurant called the Phoenix Café.  

The logo would be a phoenix rising from a coffee cup, symbolic of triumph after the Cupps setback.  

The next few months were spent in fruitless meetings with downtown planners and unsuccessful requests for bank loans. 

By December, Trogdon walked away from the idea. 

“I called everyone who was involved at that point and said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it anymore,’” she said.  “It was painful to not get it.”  

Community-supported restaurant 

The plan for the Phoenix Café was trashed, but Trogdon was determined to not let the passion for starting a new restaurant die. She still had a strong customer base in Rock Hill, specifically with faculty and staff of Winthrop.

In the spring of 2010, she resolved to find a way to start feeding and caring for people again.  

Her sister e-mailed her an article from Gourmet Magazine that featured CSR’s as an up-and-coming business trend.  Convinced, Trogdon pulled out her Cupps customer mailing list and test-drove the idea. 

“All these people say they want you back…then put your money where your mouth is,” she said.  

CSR members came out of the woodwork.  With the help of local attorney Donovan Steltzner, Trogdon drafted the legal documents necessary for individual investors.  

From that point, it was “stop talking; let’s start walking,” she said. 

“When I started asking people for money, I realized I had to put my name on (the restaurant),” Trogdon said.  “The Phoenix came from a place of anger.  When I let go of the Phoenix, everything else fell into place.” 

“Foodies” in Rock Hill

Within two months of being open, the café outgrew the space, which formerly housed Luigi’s Pizza. 

Business boomed to the point that after two months, Trogdon had made the money she thought she’d be bringing in at six months.  Within a few weeks, she had already tripled the amount of staff members she originally thought she would need. 

The challenge now, she said, is to “grow smart; don’t get too big for our britches.”  

Part of staying small is Trogdon’s dedication to buy from nearby farmers who produce food in a sustainable way. 

Cindy Hamrick, owner of New Terra Farms in Chester, will soon be providing produce for the café.  Like Trogdon, she is part of the “foodie” movement carving its niche in Rock Hill.  

“It’s about a really deep appreciation for everyone and everything involved,” Hamrick said.  “The person, the plant; you care about everything that’s tied into your food and what you’re eating.”

An increase in “big business” and chain-operated stores and restaurants has diminished the sense of community in America, Hamrick said.

But generous and committed people like Trogdon are building the community concept back up. 

“She just has a real generous way of sharing her passion and sharing her food with other people,” Hamrick said. 

Cost of local food

Buying meat and produce locally can result in paying more for food in some cases, she said, but it is cheap to grow your own.  

“If people prioritize price over community, then big business is going to grow, not the community,” Hamrick said.  

At Lell’s, the cost of local food is an issue because Trogdon does not want to pass on those extra dollars to customers.  Not every ingredient can be local, sustainable food and stay at an attractive price.

Her beef comes from a farm in Charlotte about 30 minutes away, her pork from Caw Caw Creek farm in Columbia just more than an hour down the road and her bread from Breadsmith in Fort Mill just a few miles away. 

Breakfast at Lell’s uses about 80 percent sustainable food.

“I’m on a soapbox (about local food), but I’m not interested in cramming it down people’s throat,” she said.  

Seeing customers leave Lell’s happy after eating local, healthy food makes the long hours worth it for Trogdon. 

Even after a day after breakfast and lunch on her feet, she sits in an empty booth and says, “There’s never a day I dread coming in here.”