Street Feud is a concept that’s been taking shape for years — first as a stall at Avanti, where it debuted in August 2019. In February 2020, owner Merlin Verrier thought he’d found a space for the concept on South Broadway, but the pandemic put a halt to that plan, and Verrier ended up moving into venue/bar Number Thirty Eight in October 2020. “They had built everything out,” he says. “All I had to do was get a team and food, and I put like $2,500 in the bank, hoping it would work, and it got us through a year of it. It gave us a chance to refine our recipes and get better at our systems.”
Verrier spent five months negotiating a lease for a different South Broadway location, but that deal fell apart just six weeks before his Number Thirty Eight stint was set to end. “At that point I was crushed…like, it’s over,” he recalls. “After 24 hours of sobbing, this place popped up on the market, and I was able to see it right away, and I have a lot of mutual friends with Goose.”