Final Approach for Runway Cafe at GMU

By: Robert Hoover

GREENVILLE, SC - Runway Café first took off in 2010 and has served the Greenville community for over 12 years with the original owners, Mike Bliss and Lem Winesett. There are very few general aviation restaurants in the region and only one is adjacent to the runway at the busiest general aviation airport in South Carolina. Runway Café is being featured in the popular Food Network show ‘Restaurant Impossible’ which will air on February 23 at 8:00 p.m.

The sole purpose of Restaurant Impossible and the host Celebrity Chef Robert Irvine is to save America’s most desperate restaurants from failure in just 48 hours and a budget of $10,000. Wait…was Runway Café in trouble? It seemed to be doing well.

Runway Café remains a family run restaurant that serves delicious food and will now be open on Friday and Saturday nights for seated dinner service with one owner in the captain’s chair, Lem Winesett. The new hours will be posted and start after the debut of the show.

The idea was simple. Give the community a place to eat and enjoy watching planes take off and land. The actual execution started out with great momentum and desire to serve the community was evident. Runway Café co-owners, Mike and Lem, have an amazing space, large dining room, and the most unique event space in Greenville. It was the perfect opportunity for Mike because of his years of experience in the restaurant industry and because the book store he operated out of was being sold.?

Runway Café started out servicing the local business community and pilots that flew in for what is colloquially referred to as a $100 hamburger. The background is that pilots would always look for a reason to fly; even short distances. The nickname incorporated the round-trip cost of renting or operating a light general aviation airplane to fly to an airport restaurant, eat, and return home which would total $100. The annual cost of living increases and fuel costs over the years make this cost much higher now, but pilots still love to have reasons to fly. Everything in the restaurant was aviation themed and provided some education about the history of the airport.

Soon after Runway Park opened for the public in 2012 and created a marvelous space for children to play in view of the runway. This window to aviation was created for the community to have a place for families to enjoy, wave to planes taxiing out, and watch planes take off and land. The café was still the foundation for this “community corridor” that GMU was building.

A different environment was created for the café which had more parents and children and less business people. The pilot community never failed to fly in showing off their planes to the public. GMU events were the same and small things were changed to accommodate the park patrons.

Sometimes it is the small things that affect the morale and reasons why you do things though. You have to really love doing something over time when you are not making any money at it and don’t see the purpose anymore. When you struggle to make ends meet, make constant sacrifices, take away things that seem insignificant, those small things become huge over a 12-year time span. Sometimes you forget the reasons you wanted to start a restaurant in the first place.

Other venues arrived and things seem to be doing well. The Miliary History Center of the Carolinas (MHCC) opened a military history museum in GMU’s south ramp in 2017. Takeoff Mini Golf opened a great new addition to the corridor in 2022. More venues brought more people and also highlighted the same issues.?

The final blow was when the COVID pandemic hit in 2020. That affected a lot of restaurants and Runway Café was no different. The café had to change their hours and opened every day for only four hours during lunch. Mike and Lem could not find anyone to work those hours and stay long term no matter how hard they tried. They were stuck and their lease was not going to be renewed because they could not open for regular hours after pandemic problems were ending. It was time to sell.

Before the pandemic, Mike and Lem applied to be a candidate for Restaurant Impossible.?Hope came in the form of a decision to feature Runway Café in an episode and filming began on Oct. 26 and Oct. 27 of 2022. Those couple of intensely busy days highlighted the bad and helped to inspire the good in the restaurant, the employees, and the community support. The show is said to be one of the best episodes ever.

After the Restaurant Impossible team left and the dust settled, there were mixed feelings from the owners. Mike wanted still wanted to sell. Lem wanted to stick it out. The core group of the Runway Café staff wanted to keep the team together and fought extremely hard for it. In the end, Lem bought out his partner and became the sole owner of Runway Café. The café remains a family run business in the hands of a founding owner with the core team ready to continue to serve the community. Runway Café has new feel to it and will be opening for Friday and Saturday night table service after the airing of the show. The café is still looking for good people who want a positive family environment.

About the Community Corridor at the Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU)

The Community Corridor was created for everyone to have a fun place to go and fall in love with aviation. The Community Corridor has Runway Café, Runway Park, the MHCC Military History Museum, and Takeoff Mini Golf to serve the Upstate community. All public events held or money raised for these events goes back into the maintenance of the area. For more information see www.greenvilledowntownairport.com.

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