On this episode of Coffee with Cool People, host Chip Munn sat down with Eric Gray, a Statesville, North Carolina native who traded milking cows for building community along the Grand Strand. Gray describes himself as a dairy farmer at heart, raised among uncles, cousins, and Sunday church reunions, yet itching for a different life. In 1983 he moved to the beach, took a landscaping job, and soon found a lane that fit his people-first hospitality.
Gray learned the business from the floor up. He tended bars at local fixtures like Studebaker’s, the Spanish Galleon, and Cowboys, took a seven-month detour to St. Thomas to bartend in Charlotte Amalie, then returned to manage busy restaurant bars at home. Corbin’s Bar and Grill became his proving ground, a place he calls his “safe place,” where hard work and straight talk set the tone. That is also where life shifted for good. A self-described sworn bachelor, Gray met the woman who would become his wife and launched a courtship that could have been a movie montage. He sent flowers for weeks, showed up to pick up tabs, even covered her car with Hershey’s Kisses, thoughtfully frozen so they would not melt.
Marriage raised new ambitions. Gray wanted to own, not just manage. He lowballed a turnkey spot in Marion, fully expecting a rejection, then heard the owner say the words that changed his path: you just bought a restaurant. Thursday’s Bar and Grill opened on Christmas Eve 1993 after a freezer failure forced his hand. He and his wife ran the entire operation that night, cooking, bartending, and washing dishes. Business grew quickly, and Gray later bought the building next door for parking, then converted it into a barbecue concept and a strong catering venture.
Fatherhood reframed the grind. Gray saw himself becoming his dad, working every hour and missing moments with his two daughters. He sold the restaurants, returned to the coast, and in 2003 earned his real estate license. The early years were rugged. Big commercial deals fell through. The 2008 downturn hit hard. He survived by diversifying, listing everything from land tracts to mobile homes and condos, and by outworking the slow seasons.
All the while, a signature idea simmered. In December 1993, the same month he opened Thursday’s, Gray had mixed a homemade wing sauce in a small townhouse kitchen on 30th Avenue in Myrtle Beach and taken test batches to the fire station next door. The firefighters kept asking for more. Years later, working in real estate, he brought jars as thank-you gifts, then added a label and a name. Feelin’ Saucy found its moment. A trademark tussle with a national chain followed; Gray dug up years of proof that he had been distributing the sauce, hired a top attorney, and won. Today there is a storefront, festival booths, a co-packer, and a simple tagline that fits the brand and the man: do your lips a flavor.
Ask Gray for a fictional character and he does not reach for a superhero. He laughs about an imaginary childhood friend named John, a sounding board who helped him think through decisions and nudge bold ideas into motion. That private joke says a lot about the public story. Eric Gray builds by trusting his gut, doing the work, and finding a way to make people feel welcome, whether they are at a bar, a closing table, or a sauce tent at a crowded festival.
