The Babe Cave Owner Pays the Price for Her Dream Job – Charlotte Magazine

One of my favorite parts of this job is when I expect to tell one story and come away from an interview with something completely different. This happened two years ago after I met Robbie McNair-Guzman. 

I was planning to write a Local Flavor piece on Babe Cave, her new, over-the-top, pink-blitzed cocktail lounge and brunch spot in Enderly Park. But our 30-minute interview stretched into a two-and-a-half-hour conversation that had us both in stitches at times—and shedding a few tears at others. There was so much more to this woman than the Barbie-pink venue she owned, and my Local Flavor story barely scratched the surface.

That’s the thing about a good food and drink story: It’s rarely just about what’s on the menu. In Robbie’s case, it was a decades-long journey marked by obstacles and setbacks that would tempt even the most resilient business owner to give it all up for the security of a 9-to-5. 

Restaurants have a notoriously high failure rate. The National Restaurant Association estimates that 60% fail in their first year of operation and 80% fail within five years. The statistics for Black women like Robbie are even more dismal. Only 8% of the country’s 1 million restaurants are Black-owned, according to Civil Eats. About 2,800 of those are owned by Black women—that’s less than a third of 1% of all American restaurants.

So what makes a person risk it all in an industry that’s stacked against her? And when you do fail, what motivates you to get back up and do it again?

Less than six months after that Local Flavor piece ran, Babe Cave closed. At the time, Robbie and her business partner cited disputes with their neighbors and landlord. I knew from our conversation that there was more to that story. (There always is.) Halted SBA loans. COVID spikes. Parking disputes with neighboring restaurants. Negative publicity from said disputes. The end of their business partnership. 

I believed Robbie when she said it wasn’t the end of the road for Babe Cave. She’d already owned a nightclub and an event-planning company, and she’d rallied and reinvented herself too many times to give up now. “This is the 33rd year I’ve been self-employed,” she says. “What else could I do?”

In 2019, she had close to a million dollars in sales through her event-planning company, The Good Life. “If you know the statistics, 80% of all African American businesses fail in the first 18 months,” Robbie says. “As a minority woman, I’m in the 1% with these kinds of sales, right? That’s when statistics do mean something. I’ve come way too far and defied way too many odds to quit.”

So Robbie spent almost two years rebuilding her business. This, she says, is the cost of her dream job. “There are so many generational issues that affect Black people,” she says. “It doesn’t make me mad.  It makes me sad. It’s why I’m so determined in business. That’s not gonna be my legacy.”

Babe Cave in LoSo

In April, Babe Cave reopened in an industrial space in LoSo. In addition to cocktails, charcuterie boards, and dessert towers, it has mixology classes, a floral bar, and elevated Sunday brunch. Most important, it’s a non-threatening environment where women can come as they are.

If you visited the previous location, you’ll know Robbie took all of the best parts with her. “We still have the ‘Pretty Girl Playground’ sign. I didn’t want to abandon it altogether,” she says. “But it was important that we grew up because I’ve grown up. At Babe Cave, I used to say, ‘If Barbie had a nightclub, that would be it,’” she says. “But now, I feel like Barbie has matured—and this is it.”

TAYLOR BOWLER is the lifestyle editor.