A Southern Season

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A Southern Season is a gourmet food retail and mail-order store based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The store offers an enormous selection of gift baskets, specialty foods, wines, cheeses, coffees, teas, gourmet delicatessen foods, condiments, confections, cookware, utensils, and dinnerware. The store contains a state-of-the-art cooking school, a restaurant, and a card and flower shop. A Southern Season also offers free daily gourmet food “tastings” to its walk-in customers.

[edit] History

A Southern Season was created in 1975 by Michael Cooper Barefoot as a coffee roastery. In 1978, it was operating primarily as a retail store offering gourmet specialty food items in Chapel Hill. By 2003, it had moved up to a 59,000 square foot space in Chapel Hill's University Mall, making it one of the largest specialty-only gourmet markets in the United States.

Revenues from all its business lines in 2005 were around $25 million.

[edit] Offerings

A Southern Season retail store
Weathervane, a restaurant located in the store
CLASS -- offered cooking classes in a specially-designed space in the store
Web and catalog-based mail order based in Hillsborough, North Carolina (2.5 million catalogs distributed a year[1])
"Taste! A Southern Season" store located in Raleigh-Durham International Airport, operated by The Paradies Shops[2]