An optimistic restaurant opening in the newly developed Willey Street shopping district won’t survive the area’s student-led boom and bust seasons, says its owner, who now plans to expand an existing liquor store into the vacant restaurant space.
Vietnamese sandwich shop Bahn Mi Boys opened in June 2023 at its Whalley Street location. Owner Hashmukhbhai Parekh said the store did good business for about a year and a half but struggled during the student holidays. By August 2025, the restaurant had announced its closure on Instagram.
Even though the store is right across the street from the busy Olympia Mills student housing complex, Parekh said he can’t find a new restaurant tenant because business is so slow when students are on summer break.
“I tried for a year [a] restaurant … but no one wants to come because from May to August there are no students, so they have a problem,” Parekh told the Columbia Zoning Board of Appeals on Thursday.
Parikh said he plans to expand the existing Tony’s Liquor Store into the former Bahn Mi Boys location at 625 Whaley, Suite C, since no restaurateurs want the space.
The Columbia Zoning Board of Appeals approved a special exception March 5 to allow the expansion.
Parekh told the board he operates a Shiv Mart convenience store on the corner of Whaley and Wayne streets since 2004. Attorney Jake Moore, who represented Parekh at the hearing, explained that in 2020 he remodeled and built a “new, modern” store with two retail spaces. Moore also stressed that Parikh wanted the second location to remain a restaurant space, but the economics didn’t seem to be working out. “Come summer, students are gone for about four months over the summer, and the restaurant is dead,” Moore told the board. “As a result, restaurants can’t survive.”
Part of the vacant storefront will be used for storage, and the remaining 1,000 square feet is expected to be occupied by an expanded liquor store. The zoning board approved the expansion plan 4-1, with board President Kathryn Fenner voting against the plan, saying she believed there were already too many liquor stores in the area. There are two other liquor stores within about 1.5 miles of the existing store.
Green’s Beverages on Assembly Street is about 0.7 miles from the Whaley Street liquor store, about a 15-minute walk or a 5-minute drive.
Tilly’s Warehouse in Five Points is about 1.7 miles from the Whaley Street store, a 40-minute walk or an 8-minute drive.
A member of the public has objected to plans for a liquor store.
Viola Hendley, of the Mill District Alliance, which represents area communities, said she was concerned about traffic congestion on Whaley Street during peak hours.
“Whalley Street is a very, very, very busy street, with 22,000 cars traveling every day during the school year,” Hendley said.
Several board members and attorney Moore disagreed that expanding the liquor store would create traffic problems.
“If we do find a restaurant that can go in, the traffic associated with that restaurant will be much greater than the additional 1,000 feet of retail space for a liquor store,” Moore said.
