Sweet Tea

What happened after

posted closure message to Facebook page July 20, 2014; spine notes a 2013 revisit as "Sweet Tea's Restaurant & Catering" prior to this final closure

Closure date on record: 2014-07-20

What happened on the show

An inexperienced couple with a father's life savings on the line raised the stakes at Sweet Tea, a relatively new restaurant in Pineville run by Christine and Jeffrey. They had struggled to keep it afloat for a year, and money and time were both running short. The food told the story Irvine hears often here, coming straight out of a packet, a can, or the freezer. His fix rebuilt the menu around scratch cooking and, fittingly for the name, taught the owners to brew proper sweet tea rather than fake the house specialty. The whole reset ran on the show's standard two-day clock and a roughly ten-thousand-dollar budget, with the design team handling the room. Irvine's aim was to give a young, overextended couple a fighting chance before the father's stake ran out.

After the cameras left

Sweet Tea earned a rare middle chapter before its end. The show revisited it in season five in March 2013, by which point it was trading as Sweet Tea's Restaurant and Catering. That reprieve did not hold: on July 20, 2014, the owners posted a closure message to the restaurant's Facebook page. We rate the closing high confidence on the strength of that direct announcement. The Pineville-Matthews Road address lost its restaurant despite the second look the series gave it.