Lula & Sadie’s, the Southern cuisine restaurant that has anchored Durham’s Lakewood neighborhood at 2022 Chapel Hill Road, is closing its dining room after Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026. Owner and chef Harry Monds announced the closure on Instagram this week, telling customers that rising costs and shrinking foot traffic made it impossible to keep the brick-and-mortar restaurant running as it has for the past six years.
Monds broke the news in a post on Sept. 9, according to the News & Observer, which reported that the restaurant will stop serving customers after that final Sunday brunch service. The name Lula & Sadie’s honors Monds’ grandmothers, and the restaurant built its reputation on dishes like red velvet waffles, Nashville-style hot chicken sandwiches, and a pimento cheese burger the kitchen added after the move into its current building. Per the same report, Monds cited declining customer foot traffic and rising product costs as the driving forces behind the closure, and he attributed lower customer spending to people simply having less disposable income to go around.
“Small businesses need your patronage to survive,” Monds said, according to the News & Observer’s report on the closure — a line that captures the tightrope independent restaurants have been walking across Durham this year.
A Six-Year Run That Started in a Food Hall
Lula & Sadie’s story began at the Durham Food Hall, where the concept first took shape before Monds and his team struck out on their own. During that initial two-year stint starting in 2020, Monds was among several vendor tenants who publicly voiced concerns over design constraints, rigid operating hours, and friction with hall management, according to INDY Week. That experience helped push the restaurant toward a standalone location, and in 2023 — three years before this month’s closure announcement — Lula & Sadie’s moved into the historic building on Chapel Hill Road that Monds said he had wanted for some time…