New breakfast spot Snooze Eatery opens in Eastgate Plaza

Snooze Eatery, a new breakfast restaurant in Eastgate Crossing in Chapel Hill, is now open.

Snooze is a nationwide breakfast chain restaurant that serves a variety of creative and “responsibly sourced” breakfast dishes, according to its website. The Chapel Hill location held its soft opening from Nov. 3 to 5 and its grand opening on Nov. 8. 

The soft opening was held in collaboration with three nonprofit groups: PORCH, Best Buddies and the Snooze Compass Foundation. 

The Nov. 5 soft open day was held with PORCH, a hunger relief organization in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

Each guest received one free entree and one beverage, and diners were encouraged to donate to PORCH rather than pay for a meal. 

Susan Romaine, the mayor pro tem of Carrboro and a founder of PORCH, said the restaurant was packed at the soft opening.

“It's a really wonderful partnership between Snooze and PORCH, knowing the link between those who enjoy dining at Snooze and then providing that hunger relief for so many families in our community who are really struggling to get food on their tables each month,” Romaine said. 

She said the partnership has allowed PORCH to send out extra bags of food this month — which is especially important during holiday months. 

Romaine said she thinks the Chapel Hill and Carrboro area is always looking for more good breakfast restaurants and that Snooze will do well.

“It just felt like a real community celebration having everybody out and getting their first look at what I think will be a really fun, new breakfast place in town if you're a breakfast lover,” Romaine said. “Snooze has pretty much everything you can possibly ask for in terms of all of the selections on the menu.”

This is the fourth location of Snooze in North Carolina, with the other three all located around Charlotte. 

“Opening has been great. The area has been very receptive to us even before we opened our doors,” Meagan O’Mara, the general manager of Snooze’s Chapel Hill location, said.

She said it has been a pleasure to open a location here and that she hopes to build a strong relationship with the Chapel Hill community. 

“We opened up with a great team,” O’Mara said. “I think we found a really great, unique and eclectic group of people that are very excited and very hard working.”

Jasmin Hobbs and Kelly Greenlaw, both servers at Snooze, said their experiences at the restaurant have been positive so far. 

“I kind of started training a little bit later, and they helped me get up to speed with everything, and they've been super helpful, and everyone's been really good. It's been really awesome,” Hobbs said. 

Hobbs said she was attracted to the welcoming and friendly environment at Snooze — she had been to Snooze in California before and decided to apply when she saw a location was coming to Chapel Hill.

Greenlaw said she has been serving for 20 years and decided to apply because she enjoys working at breakfast restaurants. 

O’Mara said she is excited to open up a new location in Chapel Hill and have opportunities to give back to the local community. 

“With the team being very excited about everything, I think that's just really brought a lot of that energy to the community and it's just been very helpful,” O’Mara said.

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