Whoever wears the hat grills the meat. That was the rule at Brooks’ Sandwich House when Charlotte Magazine visited in 2014, and it was the rule twins David and Scott Brooks had run the cinderblock stand by for decades. A cheeseburger all the way, smashed on the flat top with cheese, the family chili, mustard and diced white onions, cost $3.50 then. The wedge fries made it five dollars.
The prices have moved a little. Nothing else has. The stand still takes cash only, still serves through a single walk-up window, and still draws a line of work trucks and BMWs to a gravel lot at 2710 North Brevard Street, where the light rail now runs across the road.
It started with a car painter
Calvin “C.T.” Brooks Jr. opened the burger stand in 1973, according to WBTV, in a part of the city that was then North Charlotte, a mill village with its own downtown long before anyone called it NoDa, as the food writer Kathleen Purvis put it for Axios. The chili recipe, which the family has never published, came with the building.
C.T. handed the business to his twin sons, and Scott and David ran it together for decades, a three-generation family business known for burgers, hot dogs and chili. Reader’s Digest eventually named the burger the best in North Carolina. The regulars ran from longtime neighbors and office workers to the Panthers’ owner, David Tepper, Axios reported.
The morning of December 9, 2019
Scott Brooks, 61, was shot and killed in an attempted robbery early on Monday, December 9, 2019, as he arrived to open the restaurant, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police, who said the business was likely targeted because it dealt in cash. Flowers and customers arrived at the stand within hours. The Brooks family are definitely an institution, the owner of the Evening Muse told WBTV. Two men were later charged.
David Brooks admitted he questioned whether to reopen. When something like this happens it’s devastating, he told WFAE, and you have no idea what you’re going to do the next moment. After several days his daughter Lauren, who is his manager, told him: Daddy, they can beat you, but they can’t beat you down. So let’s get back with it.
The stand reopened on Saturday, February 1, 2020, nearly two months later. People began lining up at 6 a.m., four hours before the door opened, and the line curved around the block of Brevard Street. David opened with a prayer at the window. I hate the circumstances, he told Spectrum News, but I love the purpose. A new mural on the back of the building carried Scott’s face beside his favorite phrase, too blessed to be stressed. The hours changed too: no more breakfast, so no employee would arrive in the dark, and everyone would come and go together.
David Brooks has been candid about what the years since cost. We’ve had tragedies and we’ve had losses, he told WCNC in 2023, but I’ve picked myself back up and kept going. A thirty-year customer told WBTV the same day that when the shop has food left over, it gives it away, to the homeless or whoever is hungry. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said after the shooting that the business was likely targeted because it dealt in cash, and it still does.
What you actually order
The cheeseburger all the way. Or the double, or a hot dog all the way, or the chili cheese fries. The chili is the thing, and “all the way” is the only way regulars order it. The stand runs weekday lunch hours only, and it does not take cards.
The family also gave something away. In 2019 the brothers donated more than two acres of land to Habitat for Humanity for affordable housing, according to WSOC, and a local apparel maker sold T-shirts with Scott’s phrase to help finish the project. In June 2023 the stand marked fifty years.
That November the family listed the property for sale: just under an acre of transit-oriented land in the arts district, with a 480-square-foot building on it. David Brooks told WCNC he would stay open until a sale and then step away to retire, and that if his children carried the business on, it would be at a new location and perhaps in a new form. As of this writing the shop still operates on weekday afternoons, and no sale has been reported. Anyone planning a first visit should not plan a late one.
The building is about 480 square feet on just under an acre zoned for transit-oriented development, and the open lot beside it has drawn interest from parking vendors, food trucks and people wanting to run open-air markets, David Brooks told WSOC in May 2023, when he first said he was exploring ideas and that the business itself was not for sale. Six months later the land was. The broker told CharlotteFive the family felt the property was more valuable developed and would rather see it put to good use.
Why it matters
NoDa changed completely around Brooks’. The mill next door became apartments, mill houses became bungalows at double the price, and the neighborhood the Brooks family opened in was renamed by people who arrived later. The burger did not change, and the family did not sell when the light rail made the corner valuable, and that is why the city grieved as it did in December 2019.
The land is for sale now, and the family has earned the right to sell it. We’ve had a good run, David Brooks said, and hopefully I’ve done some good in the community. On the side of the building, in paint, his brother is still telling the line outside not to worry.