Copper River Grill, 1230 Bower Parkway: May 2020 13 comments
Copper River Grill in Harbison is another casualty of the COVID-19 crisis, though it has featured here before in the comments as an example of a place that had gone downhill, and the recent Yelp reviews are not stellar.
Cola Daily has the story on the closing here.
I only visited Copper River Grill once, years ago. I had heard it was a good place for late night pizza, so I hit it around midnight one evening. My memory is that the pizza was OK, nothing special, and that it was quite hard to get my drink refilled. In any event, I never went back.
I do like the entrance-way though.
(Hat tip to commenter Heath)
13 Responses to 'Copper River Grill, 1230 Bower Parkway: May 2020'
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Tom
16 Jun 20 at 1:03 pm
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The 2 times I went back in 2016, my experience was the exact same. I was on lunch break and got back to work over an hour late both times.
Sidney
17 Jun 20 at 6:38 am
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Folks it appears to me that B Mac is planning on moving in to this space...
Andrew
23 Aug 25 at 8:09 pm
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@Andrew -- They've been open for a couple of weeks now. I've seen a lot of mixed reviews on it - people either think the food is great or they don't. We tried it last weekend and were not overly impressed. There were a lot of issues that could be attributed to working the kinks out, but my understanding is that he has other locations so I'd expect a lot of the kinks to have already been worked out. Things we didn't care for: wet plates, food not being labeled and it not being obvious what it was, a LOT of waste (mostly coming from the fact that you can have a pizza made and brought to your table, but most people we saw were only eating a slice or two and then the rest was going in the trash), no table (only booths) in the lower section of the restaurant which makes it difficult for people with mobility issues, and the flow of the buffet was awkward. The biggest thing for us though was that we just didn't think the food tasted very good. It wasn't gross, but it just tasted like stuff that had come out of cans or boxes from the Chef Store.
I doubt we'll be going back for the regular dinner buffet, but we do want to check out their breakfast buffet. Hopefully that will be good now that Shoney's is no longer an option.
Side note: I said something to one of the servers (who was not young, mind you) about the wet plates being a DHEC violation and her response was "What's a DHEC?" Yikes.
Gypsie
25 Aug 25 at 10:03 pm
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Interesting. B Mac made a post on Facebook a short while ago today stating that they would be closed today due to staffing issues. This is not the first time they have done this.
Many of the comments are from (so they say) employees who are angry about not getting paid and the treatment they have endured as employees. There is an especially disturbing comment from one who claims to be one of the chefs. She goes on to detail many food safety violations that she has witnessed and discussed with management to no avail.
My guess is that this place will be closed for good soon if they don't make some major changes quickly.
Gypsie
26 Aug 25 at 2:57 pm
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Well, it just keeps getting worse. According to what is being posted, he is being sued (they don't say by who) and that employees showed up today to work and/or pick up checks only to find out there were no checks and possibly no more job. It's like a soap opera.
Gypsie
26 Aug 25 at 3:08 pm
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According to a post made by a staff member the place is permanently closed due to money issues.
Tom
26 Aug 25 at 6:52 pm
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Opened and closed in less than a month. That is wild - even for the restaurant business.
I'm not shocked though. My personal experience there last week aside, I was following along for most of the chat on their FB page today and it was pretty obvious that there was something shady going on even before the place opened. That FB page has now been removed, but there is another discussion going on about it in the Columbia Foodies FB group.
I hope all of the employees are able to get paid, but it looks like that may be a battle.
Gypsie
26 Aug 25 at 11:18 pm
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Call me crazy, but I think something is odd about the Google reviews for this place.
Multiple comments praise employees *by name* and make this place sound absolutely incredible. Yes, a great new restaurant can get many good reviews in a short amount of time, but I've never seen multiple reviews mention servers by name, repeatedly, in a short time span. There are also multiple reviews that criticize the negative reviews.
Sorry but I can't help but wonder if some friends, family, and associates of the staff were writing these.
Lavender
27 Aug 25 at 2:44 pm
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@Lavender I your theory is correct, and I suspect it is, B Mac would only be the latest in a long line of companies who have done this. I think there has been a couple of cases where companies caught doing this were brought up on charges and focrced to pay fines for committing fraud among other things.
Tom
27 Aug 25 at 3:07 pm
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I'm not one to pay much attention to Google reviews so I hadn't seen them until just now after reading Lavender's post.
I personally know a couple of the people who left negative reviews and I also know they posted similar comments on the restaurant's FB page.
Lavender, you are absolutely correct about the positive reviews though. Some of those are word for word the same glowing reviews that had been posted on the FB page -- but with DIFFERENT names! I recognize them from the odd wording and typos.
Is there anything about this place that wasn't shady???
Gypsie
27 Aug 25 at 10:30 pm
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Now there is a WLTX article about the closing:
Lavender
28 Aug 25 at 8:31 am
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Having watched the WLTX video, someone needs to investigate this guy. Either he has no business running a business or he is hiding something, I suspect the latter.
Tom
28 Aug 25 at 11:31 am
I friend of mine who went there prior to its closing said the experience was terrible. The food was bad and the service almost non-existent in a half-empty restaurant.