In a matter of hours, hundreds of comments swam beneath Monday’s social media posts announcing the closure of Dame’s Chicken & Waffles, a Greensboro institution that served up more than the best cluck around town: sandwiches and classic sides, too, and most importantly, a sense of community.
“🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾 Thank you for every memory with my mom. She is in heaven now but she loved coming here.”
“Oh no!!!! The food is amazing. I was just planning to bring my kids there 😩😩”
“No!! Y’all were the best part of my college experience.”
Damion “Dame” Moore and Randy Wadsworth met as freshmen at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where they became roommates and fraternity brothers, keeping their friendship alive well past their college days.
Moore and Wadsworth consider Greensboro home. The city always held a strong place in their hearts, Wadsworth said. Moore’s first restaurant job was in Greensboro, washing dishes and working expo—conducting the food expediting process.
“You may be born somewhere else, but you grow up in the city you went to college in,” Wadsworth said.
Decades after they met, they decided to build a business by merging their talents together—Moore had previously worked in catering, while Wadsworth held a corporate job.
“We were sitting around one day talking, and we just started pondering,” Wadsworth said.
Moore has roots in New York City, where the chicken and waffles meal was born in the Harlem neighborhood. In Moore’s years of catering, it was one of his best-selling items; something people didn’t often get to taste.
“There was a void in the marketplace for that particular product,” Moore said.
That’s when it hit them.
“Now here’s something we can do together and bring something different to the community,” Wadsworth said.
And that’s how Dame’s was born.
The waffles are the brainchild of Wadsworth’s wife, he said. She started tinkering with her grandmother’s recipes, and today, Dame’s offers sweet potato, gingerbread, and oatmeal versions of the classic fluffy grids. Moore concocted the restaurant’s chicken recipe, the sides, and the rest. Dame’s also kept up with the times, offering vegan waffles and a vegetarian fried “chicken” option.
“We took a huge risk on just really specializing in a specific genre of food, if you will, and it paid off for us really quick,” Moore said.
Their first location opened in Durham in 2010, and then in Greensboro in 2012. They also opened a location on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, which closed in 2024.
Jutting out from between Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive and Gorrell Street, Greensboro’s location boasted more than 3,000 Google reviews and 4.3 stars out of 5. The building’s perch is in the Southside neighborhood, which fell into disrepair in the 1980s and was revitalized over the last few decades.
“We never got into this game to become super rich,” Wadsworth said. “Our goal out of the gate was to try to do as much for the community as we could.” From putting up scholarship money for students at UNCG’s Bryan School of Business and Economics to local partnerships, they said they gave back every chance they got.
Newly elected at-large Greensboro City Council member Irving Allen started working for Dame’s in 2023, commuting to manage the Chapel Hill location before it closed, and then managing the Greensboro location for two years.
Some of their regulars showed up almost every day, Allen said.
“You get to know those customers and build relationships, and just have those little conversations that make your day,” he said.
“It was really a family-style type restaurant here in Greensboro,” Allen said, “Coming in with your friends, bring your family to eat. I think that kind of environment showed up in the customer base, but also the staff.”
“We celebrated people’s birthdays, graduations. It was a lot of folks’ first jobs,” Allen said. People were involved in each other’s lives and celebrated each other’s wins, he said.
And did they celebrate when Allen announced his campaign for city council, at a launch party at Dame’s.
Allen said that some customers were surprised to see him still behind the counter after he took office in December. And that’s where he kept working, up until Monday.
“I was there until the end,” he said.
Why Did Dame’s Close?
Dame’s closure comes in the midst of a string of other restaurant closures in the city. M’Coul’s Public House—a fixture at the corner of McGee and Elm streets since 2002—announced on Tuesday that it closed its doors. Earlier this month, ‘Cille and ‘Scoe’s owners decided not to renew their lease on Elm Street, which ends in July.
Wadsworth says Dame’s closure wasn’t due to rent spikes, which can be a death knell for restaurants.
“If anybody’s looking for a great landlord in a good location, I highly recommend they jump on it,” he said, “Because they are not going to find a better person or more honest landlord in these times where most people are trying to take advantage of others.”
Wadsworth says Dame’s problems stemmed from thinning margins even after the pandemic.
“The whole world changed after COVID,” Wadsworth said. “It was never the same energy.”
“We’ve seen a gradual change in the food industry in the past few years, particularly since COVID,” Moore said. People started pivoting to using more delivery services, like DoorDash and Grubhub, or taking food to go.
“That’s not what Greensboro was built on or predicated on,” Moore said.
Even after the pandemic, they noticed that many of their patrons still used those delivery apps.
“That really hurt dinner crowds,” said Wadsworth, who noted that these companies drain restaurants with their fees.
Commission fees can swipe 15-30% per order from restaurants, plus another 10-20% through delivery fees if they use the platform’s drivers, according to a 2022 delivery app impact study on restaurants.
“We wanted to make sure our customers got the food, and really felt we had no choice but to use those services,” said Wadsworth. But ultimately, businesses make very little, if any profit from those services, he said. Restaurants traditionally run on tight margins, and it hurts their bottom line.
“Those factors just became something that we couldn’t overcome, and we didn’t want to fight those battles,” Moore said.
“I’m not saying that’s the total reason we are closing at all,” Wadsworth said, “but it definitely doesn’t help.”
Feeling the Loss
Dame’s served up creativity on a plate, and the staff at Dame’s did all they could to make sure customers’ experience with them was something special, “every time,” Allen said.
It’s difficult watching the departure of any small business, Allen said, but the loss of Dame’s as a Black-owned business hit particularly hard.
“That’s tough for the community, we don’t have a lot of places that emphasize culture and art in the way that Black-owned restaurants can,” Allen said, particularly in a city that’s known for its civil rights history and being home to NC A&T University, the largest historically black university in the world, he added.
“It means a lot to people, and I think it’s gonna impact people.”
While he’s seen a lot of finger-pointing on social media as to what’s to blame for Dame’s closure, Allen encourages a different approach.
“I think what’s more important is that we try and make sure that we’re taking care of one another, that we’re doing what we can to support the businesses that we value,” he said, “I would encourage folks to patronize businesses, as much as they can, that they feel a connection to.”
“We don’t even feel that we were let down,” Wadsworth said, “We just know that it’s hard on everyone right now. It’s hard to go out and eat, to spend money on luxury items, and just having a good time.”
Everybody’s trying to take care of their families right now, he said.
“We respect that so much. But yeah, I want them to know that every chance they get, please support your small businesses.”
As advice to local restaurants, Wadsworth offered this: “Keep pushing, don’t give up.”
Make sure service is top-notch, offer quality food, and keep the overhead as low as possible, he said. For customers who want to support locals: Just take the time, go out, and dine in.
“And tip those servers, because they live off those tips,” he said.
Keep the Dream Going
A lively lunch crowd on Wednesday popped into Dame’s in Durham. Moore sat behind the counter, greeting customers picking up takeout orders. Paintings of jazz players and instruments bounced off the walls, and the buzzy music swarmed throughout the restaurant.
“We’re still on a great run,” Moore said. “We’re 15 years into this market. We just moved into what we hope will be our forever location, and it offers certain amenities that we didn’t have in our last two locations.”
Moore said the parking is ample, and they have a patio ready for when the weather’s nicer.
And while they’re holding on to their core items, Wadsworth added that they’re in the process of revamping their entire menu.
“Durham is going to continue to try to push the concept, and keep the dream going,” Wadsworth said.
But there’s a lot of sadness that comes with this decision, and it’s going to take some time to adjust to the change, he added.
“You know, we’ve done this for so long, it feels like it’s been forever,” Wadsworth said, “But we’ll be just fine. We’ll bounce back from this.”
“And you never know, we may be back in Greensboro. You never know.”
Correction: This story has been updated to show that Harlem is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan.
