Tag: fans

Matt Wohlfarth was stuck in standstill traffic on Interstate 77, commuting home from work, when he turned up the radio dial.

It was late April 2024, and he was listening to WFNZ sports talk radio. He was tired. It’d been a long few days. But something radio host Kyle Bailey said made his ears perk up — something Wohlfarth wasn’t expecting; something, up until that point, he’d never heard on a live broadcast.

He heard his name.

“He says, ‘Man, I just wish Matt would call up right now,’” Wohlfarth says, recounting the story to The Charlotte Observer. “So I got on my phone, and I called him.” Wohlfarth smiles. “And you can hear the guy in the background going, ‘No way, really?’ You know? So anyway, I called up, and they started asking me questions and …”

Wohlfarth is telling this story on Friday in the back room of the Dilworth Neighborhood Grille, the sports bar just off Morehead Street that sits just over a mile walk away from Bank of America Stadium. He sits like he owns the place. And he does. He’s wearing a black T-shirt with blue letters on the front spelling out his restaurant name and also the phrase “Keep Pounding.” He’s a bit sweaty — he had to help direct a delivery of 40,000-plus plastic cups a few minutes ago — but he’s happy, excited, relaxed.

He’s telling this story for a bunch of reasons. After all, by the time he’d called into Bailey’s show on that April 2024 afternoon, he’d already become the talk of the town. His restaurant, on night one of the 2024 NFL Draft, had been paid an unexpected visit by Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper. The billionaire had dropped in to inquire about the sign in the restaurant’s front yard that read: “Please Let The Coach & GM Pick This Year.” Then came a reportedly pleasant but poorly timed interaction — one that now rests in Tepper and Panthers lore.

At the time, it was a big deal. What started as a local story blossomed into a national one. The Charlotte Observer wrote about Tepper’s visit that night. TV stations followed in the morning. ESPN even got a hold of it eventually, too. Wohlfarth had said that the Panthers’ six straight losing seasons had amounted to “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in lost revenue, and so the message out front was frustration encased in good-humored fandom. Immediately it struck a nerve with the Carolina Panthers’ fan base — effectively calling Tepper “a meddling owner” — and as a result, Wohlfarth had compelled the franchise’s most powerful figure to walk into his restaurant and figure out what the deal was.

That’s what Bailey, the radio host, wanted to ask Wohlfarth about on that April day, with Wohlfarth in standstill traffic. So he did. And for a moment, Wohlfarth thought, that was that.

Days and weeks and months after that unexpected Tepper visit, though, something funny happened. People wanted to start to know what Wohlfarth thought — not just as a restaurant owner, but also as a fan. He had the fan credentials, after all. He’d been a Charlotte resident since 1985 and a Panthers season-ticket holder since the team’s first season in 1995.

Nowadays, the sign outside Wohlfarth’s restaurant changes every week and has turned into a voice for Carolina Panthers fans. In many ways, it’s become an unofficial landmark for the city of Charlotte. Visiting the restaurant has become an expression of the purest form of Panthers fandom — and that’s helped make this week quite busy ahead of the Panthers’ first home playoff game in 10 years.

Pose all this to Wohlfarth — the fact that his restaurant has become such a home for Panthers fans — and he’ll smile and start another story: the full story of the sign that stands in front of the restaurant.

He begins it by saying that the sign that Tepper saw … well …

“That wasn’t even my favorite.”

The Dilworth Neighborhood Grille sign’s mythology

If you actually walk up to the sign, the one staked out on a patch of pine straw that welcomes people into the restaurant’s parking lot, you’ll notice how fragile it is. It’s just a few thin slits of plywood bonded together, with legs that lean the sign on some thick brush that prevent it from toppling over.

And at the time that this sign was built, this fragility illustrated everything.

Wohlfarth moved from Fort Lauderdale to Charlotte in 1985. He went to UNC Charlotte in pursuit of a degree in architecture. He loved building things. So when he went into business with his friend and helped run the Dilworth Neighborhood Grille 21 years ago, Wohlfarth volunteered to build everything. He built the floors, sanded the tables, put in the ceiling tiles, mounted the televisions, did all the electrical and plumbing and insulation work.

All was great until 2020. Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck. People stayed home. Restaurants everywhere struggled. Bartenders and wait staff lost jobs. And so once the restaurant reopened — even in a limited capacity — Wohlfarth had an idea.

The restaurant used to be a multi-use complex — a bowling alley downstairs and a skating rink upstairs — and so it had this wonderful old-fashioned movie-theater-style marquee above its door. With the removable marquee letters, Wohlfarth would build two signs: one facing Morehead Street travelers heading eastbound, one facing Morehead Street travelers heading westbound. One exclaimed that the Grille was open; the other was a “running scoreboard” of how many employees were allowed back to work given COVID restrictions with a strong message underscoring it: “Support Local.”

That was the first time the sign hit the news. The next? That arrived when Morehead Street was undergoing construction, in 2021-23 making it difficult for people to visit the restaurant. The sign was used to complain about that. More poking fun.

Then in 2023?

“After that, there was a possibility that maybe it just goes away,” Wohlfarth said of the sign.

But then came an idea to comment on fun parts of the city. The sports, maybe.

Then he put up a sign about the Panthers — and the rest is history.

“The difference between 2015, where they go 15-1, and the year we went 1-15 is Earth-shattering,” Wohlfarth said of how the Panthers’ performance impact his business. “Not just sales, but profit. And not only the finances, but the morale, which also leads into finances. The turnover rate and all that. There have been servers or bartenders or managers who wanted to work here because it’s so fun during the games. Well, if the games aren’t fun, then that’s one less reason to work here.

“So it was a message. Because, I mean, yes, no one’s gonna listen to just me. But I certainly can add to it. And/or start it. And it turns out a lot of people did listen.”

What Matt Wohlfarth — the fan — has to say before Panthers playoff game

The Dilworth Neighborhood Grille is having a good year. The year 2025 marked the second-busiest the restaurant has been in all 21 years of the restaurant’s existence, Wohlfarth said — second only to 2022, the year after COVID restrictions settled. Wohlfarth even expanded in 2025 and opened a restaurant in Fort Mill.

With the Panthers being good enough to make the playoffs — has that helped sales?

Wohlfarth will shrug, and will talk glowingly about the Panthers whenever he can. But he also won’t go that far. Some games featured packed houses, certainly. But many haven’t. Wohlfarth said that the fact that sports gambling becoming legal in North Carolina helped a lot with his business — one that forks over $30,000 annually to DirecTV and has to have other streaming platforms to show all sorts of games, the reality of being a sports bar.

But one day, the Panthers’ improvement will seep through to the sports bar’s bottom line. The team needs to keep improving, keep building, keep winning. And they will, Wohlfarth said.

In the meantime, the Dilworth restaurant owner has stories: of former Panthers star Tre Boston hosting live meet-and-greets in the restaurant’s basement; of visits from current Panthers like coach Dave Canales and offensive lineman Taylor Moton; of his employees serving Baker Mayfield on the patio just when the quarterback learned he’d gotten released.

Wohlfarth also has ideas for new signs. The sign outside, as of Friday, says: “Home Field In The Playoffs, Just How We Planned.” As far as his favorite? That might just be the one in which he compared Tepper to the Cowboys owner: “Meddling owners never win. Run from Jerry Jones.”

On top of ideas and stories, he has what every committed fan and restauranteur has:

Hope.

Ask him what the Panthers need to do to get a winning record next year — the Panthers, after all, are in the playoffs, yes, but are 8-9 — and you’ll see it. Wohlfarth starts spinning a web of possibility, of scenarios in which the Panthers could win the next two games in the playoffs and clinch a winning record as it heads into the NFC Conference Championship game. He mentions the bad weather hurting the Rams’ high-octane passing offense. He cites the electricity that will be in Bank of America Stadium.

“And that’s just going to overwhelm everybody,” he says.

He then smiles.

“So there is a chance.”