NEELYS PULL OUT

Celebrity couple cite busy schedules

Pat and Gina Neely won’t be selling barbecue in Memphis, but we’re all invited to their New York City location.

Perhaps falling victim to their owners’ success, the pulled-pork restaurants owned by celebrity couple Patrick and Gina Neely have officially pulled out of Memphis.

Nine months after shuttering the two local Neely’s Bar-BQue eateries with vague talk of renovating the properties, but never offering a firm schedule for reopening, co-owner Patrick Neely acknowledged this week that the restaurants would not be back in business.

The closings have no connection — other than a shared family name — to Jim Neely’s Interstate Bar-B- Que locations on South Third in Downtown Memphis, on State Line Road in Southaven, and at two sites at the Memphis International Airport. All of those restaurants remain open.

In a brief statement on Facebook, Patrick Neely wrote, “Gina and I want to thank you, our followers and fans for your continuous loyalty. We want to say from the bottom of our hearts how much we appreciate you. We want to share with you that we have closed the Neelys Bar-B-Que restaurants in Memphis, Tennessee, indefinitely. We want to invite you to continue to support our New York location. Again we want to thank you for your continuous support.”

The New York property celebrates its second anniversary this month.

In October, restaurant co- owner Gina Neely announced that the company’s locations at 670 Jefferson and 5700 Mt. Moriah had closed indefinitely for renovations. Neely, who owned the restaurants with her husband, Patrick Neely, and starred with him in the television show “Down Home With the Neelys” on the Food Network, also confirmed that the company had ceased operating concessions at FedExForum.

At the time, Gina Neely expressed hope that the Downtown restaurant would reopen and cited a demanding schedule as a contributing factor in the closures that resulted in the loss of about 80 jobs. She acknowledged that the Mt. Moriah property would likely not return as a restaurant, but instead could be used for a catering business or to house shipping operations.

“We’re gone so much and involved in so many projects that it’s been really difficult to concentrate on the restaurants here like we need to,” Neely said last October. “We’re 100 percent committed to Memphis, but we realize that some things were not done right and weren’t up to our standards.”

Jim Neely, Patrick Neely’s uncle who in 1979 created the Neely franchise that would become famous the world over, said the failed restaurants should serve as a cautionary tale for any would-be absentee entrepreneurs. And he offered a straightforward recipe for success.

“I’m here every day at 5:30 a.m. and I work all day, seven days a week. I’ve been very fortunate and Memphis has been very good to me, but I’ve worked hard at it,” Jim Neely said. “Quality suffers when the owner isn’t present and if there’s no one there to make sure that everything is up to the right standards. That’s why you saw Charlie Vergos at the Rendezvous every day for decades and why I’m still at mine. You have to keep a close eye on your operation.”

For Patrick and Gina Neely, their Memphis culinary operations appear to be over. And even though on Tuesday the couple’s local restaurants were still listed on their website (ginaandpat.com), their Mt. Moriah property is being advertised for sale or lease, while the Downtown property has been bought by restaurateur Demarcus Woodard.

Woodard is relocating his Monsieur Demarcus French Creperie from Bartlett and plans to open by mid-August. The restaurant is receiving a total makeover, including adding new fixtures and furniture, lightening up the interior, adding a blackand-white awning over the front door and painting the familiar yellow exterior white. The restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner, and will feature sweet and savory crepes, sandwiches and entrees.

And yes, barbecue will be on the menu. That seems only fitting for Woodard, who once worked in the kitchen at Jim Neely’s Interstate BarB-Que and as a busboy at The Rendezvous.

“It is going to have a completely different look with an entirely different menu, but of course with a little barbecue for those who enjoy it in their crepes,” Woodard said Tuesday.

“I love this property and the location and I’m looking forward to stepping outside the box and offering people a new experience here.”

Patrick and Gina Neely did not respond to phone calls asking for comment on Tuesday.