MACON, Ga. — A new restaurant is headed to Mercer Village next year, taking the place of Nu-Way Weiners.
Bear Burgers is owned by Jonathan Keene, the previous owner of Keene's Kafe. Back in May, 13WMAZ told you about the restaurant located in a Shell Gas station.
Just two months later, Keene said his restaurant Keene's Kafe was robbed overnight after someone cut a hole in the back of the building, stole his money and ruined his food supplies.
Despite the devastating news, he made a trip to the grocery store and was back to selling burgers in the morning.
Related: 'It looked like a bank heist': Macon restaurant owner talks break in and community response
The community poured out support for Keene and raised over $5,000 for the restaurant to get back on its feet.
Keene operated at the Shell Gas Station on Thomaston Road for a while, but soon, he set his sights on a bigger venture.
He says he wanted to open his own place, and that while the gas station was a good start, he thinks the Mercer Village location will better suit his business.
"As we started to get more and more popular, we knew the Shell just didn't provide the correct atmosphere that our customers really required and what they deserved," Keene said. "So, we knew that we had to seek somewhere else in order to continue to grow."
He said he wanted to make the business more reflective of the Macon community, which is why he dropped the name Keene's Kafe and renamed the restaurant Bear Burgers.
"We wanted to really brand it with Macon, and when you think about Macon one of the big things you think about is Mercer University...and we knew we wanted to be a part of that and so we came up with the concept of Bear Burgers," he said.
The restaurant will have a few menu items from the original Keene's Kafe menu, along with new creations.
To find out more about Bear Burgers and be on the lookout for opening dates, you can follow them on their Facebook page.
If you still crave some grub from Nu-Way - don't worry.
They have several other locations around Macon, and owner James Cacavious says they are looking to build another store. However, an announcement with all the details will be made in a few weeks.
"We will be building another store to relocate one of other locations. I don't want to disclose too much yet, but we will probably make an announcement on that in the next couple of weeks," he said.
If you still want to visit the Mercer Village location, you have only around a week and a half to get your hot dogs. Cacavious says the store will officially close on Monday, Dec. 18.
Lots of Maconites love the store and are sad to see it go. Cacavious says he's sad too.
"We're very saddened," he said.
He says part of the reason the Mercer Village location in particular didn't perform as well as other stores is the lack of a drive-thru, which hit the business hard during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We didn't have a drive-thru window and we were kind of cautious about that, and now we know how other restaurants without a drive-thru window feel. It was doing fairly well coming up and then all of a sudden COVID hit, and we took about four steps backward," he said.
He went on to say that 70% of their business relies on drive-thru window revenue, and not having one in Mercer Village put a dent in their sales.
The Mercer Village location also houses the original sign that hung on the downtown Nu-Way location before it closed, and Cacavious says the sign will find another home at one of the other establishments in Macon.
As for the Nu-Way workers at Mercer Village, they have already been re-assigned to work at other locations.
Nu-Way has locations at Baconsfield, Bloomfield, Napier Square, Northside Drive, Zebulon Road and more if you want to go grab some food. They also have locations in Warner Robins.
To find out more about Nu-Way, you can visit their website.