The Can Opener Food Truck Park, Craft Coffee, Beer and Cocktails

Food court, Bar, Beer hall in Durham, NC

Address

205 S Gregson St, Durham, NC, 27701

Phone

(919) 973-0011

Website

thecanopenerdurham.com

About The Can Opener Food Truck Park, Craft Coffee, Beer and Cocktails

The Can Opener is downtown Durham's first permanent food truck park, located at 205 S Gregson Street at the intersection of South Gregson and West Pettigrew Streets. The indoor-outdoor venue was built around a semicircle of five food truck spots, anchored by three established Triangle vendors who partnered to launch it: Joe Choi's Korean barbecue truck Bulkogi, Ernest Harris's Knightdale-based barbecue truck Chick-N-Que, and Gus Megaloudis's Greek street food truck Gussy's, with additional rotating truck slots that change day to day. Inside the former American Postal Workers Union building, the Can Opener also operates a full bar serving coffee, wine, and roughly thirty beers on tap, with seating for around 350 people across indoor tables, a covered outdoor dining area near the trucks, and a rooftop patio. The venue takes its name from the nearby Norfolk Southern-Gregson Street railroad overpass, nicknamed the "can opener" bridge for its tendency to shear the roofs off trucks that misjudge its low clearance. According to reporting in INDY Week, the three founding vendors had been friends since the early 2010s, when Durham's food truck community was small and close-knit, and after years of unpredictable gigs and inconsistent site conditions, they built the Can Opener as a stable, shared home base rather than continuing to operate solely from the road. The Can Opener functions as a breakfast, lunch, and dinner destination for downtown workers and residents alike, with a rotating vendor on-site starting early each morning, and has become a gathering spot for families, live music, and private events, joining other Durham food hall-style concepts in fostering a communal dining scene downtown.

The Can Opener grew out of friendships formed in the early 2010s among Durham-area food truck operators Joe Choi, Ernest Harris, and Gus Megaloudis, back when the local food truck scene was small enough that operators helped each other out of jams, including a time a fellow trucker gave up his own generator to keep Choi's Bulkogi truck running. Choi, who had launched Bulkogi in 2009 and later opened a brick-and-mortar location at Boxyard RTP and co-founded the restaurant Namu, wanted to permanently park one of his three Bulkogi trucks rather than continue contending with the unpredictability of mobile vending. Harris, who ran multiple Chick-N-Que trucks without a permanent location, and Megaloudis, who had a brick-and-mortar Gussy's location but only one truck after a decade on the road, shared that same desire for stability. Together the three partnered to convert the old American Postal Workers Union building at the corner of South Gregson and West Pettigrew Streets into the Can Opener, envisioning it as both a daily breakfast-and-lunch spot for downtown workers and a communal gathering place for weddings, live music, and neighborhood events.

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