TRT - Testosterone Replacement Therapy in Chapel Hill, NC

Wrexham AFC will meet Chelsea in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on the evening of Wednesday July 19 as part of the 2023 FC Series. The stateside match will see the two historic clubs meet on neutral soil for the first time.

The match also marks the first international football competition to be held at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan Stadium.

Group and single-match presale information is available at FCSeries.com. Public tickets go on sale Thursday, April 27. A portion of every ticket sold will be donated to the Pediatric Hematology Oncology Clinic at UNC Children's Hospital.

Broadcast information and the official match start time will be announced later this year.

There will be two further Wrexham AFC games on July 22 on the West Coast and 28th on the East Coast. Full details will be announced as soon as the agreements are finalised.

Wrexham AFC manager Phil Parkinson said: “Our tour of the United States will be an exciting part of the summer's build-up to the new season and something we will all be looking forward to in July.

“To have the opportunity to play a team of Chelsea's calibre at the Kenan Stadium, North Carolina, will be a terrific test for our players and form an important part of our preparations for the 2023/24 season.

“We're looking forward to meeting some of the fans who have supported us so passionately from afar this season at a renowned athletics stadium."

Set among the majestic Carolina pines, Kenan Stadium has been home to the Tar Heels football program since 1927. Though primarily an American football venue, the stadium also hosted Carolina's first national championship in women's sports when the 1981 UNC women's soccer team won 1-0 over the University of Central Florida.

Unified Events will host the event in partnership with Orlando, Florida-based Florida Citrus Sports. The Chapel Hill match is the first of the 2023 FC Series, an international soccer exhibition that grew from Florida Citrus Sports' Florida Cup event.

Since 2015, the Florida Cup & FC Series has featured clubs from all over the world. Last year, Arsenal defeated Chelsea in the headline match in Orlando. This summer's FC Series schedule also includes the Orlando stop of the Premier League Summer Series when Fulham and Aston Villa meet on July 26. Additional FC Series and Florida Cup events will be announced later this year.

Longtime FC Series supporter Universal Orlando Resort will support the event in Chapel Hill as part of its partnership across all series matches.

Chelsea FC President of Business Tom Glick added: “We are delighted to return to North Carolina as part of our US tour this summer, and play in what I'm sure will be a fantastic atmosphere at Kenan Stadium.

“Our strong US fanbase support us incredibly all year round and we are looking forward to meeting them in Chapel Hill.”

University of North Carolina Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham said: “We are excited to bring Chelsea and Wrexham to Chapel Hill for this fun and historic event.

“We look forward to welcoming fans from all over the world, filling Kenan Stadium and creating a fantastic atmosphere for international competition.”

Unified Events Head of Touring Business and Operations Molly Pendleton said: "We are excited to bring this historic match to Kenan Stadium and the University of North Carolina. We can't wait to bring fans to Chapel Hill to see Chelsea and Wrexham's first date on U.S. soil in 2023."

Florida Citrus Sports CEO Steve Hogan added: "Our team is excited to work with Chelsea againfollowing last summer's successful tour.

Matching them with the incredible underdog story of Wrexham will make this a must-see match on the summer soccer calendar.

“Together with Unified Events, we look forward to bringing 'the beautiful game' to the picturesque backdrop of UNC's campus."

FC Series CEO Ricardo Villar said: "This match is a thrilling addition to the history of the FC Series.

“The pairing of Chelsea's legacy and pedigree with the resurgence of Wrexham will be an incredible experience for international football fans in the United States this summer."

In her fourth year of medical school, Dr. Christina Cruz arrived at an examination room and knocked. When she entered, she found an 11-year-old girl lying on the floor next to an oxygen tank. Her mouth was pressed to the valve — and she was speaking as if in mid-conversation, but no one else was in the room. This wasn’t a childhood game of the imagination. It was more like a hallucination or a delusion.

“This was the first time I had ever seen her,” shares Cruz, now an assistant professor in the School of Medicine’s psychiatry department. “But it was clear that she was experiencing psychosis.”

Upon further investigation, Cruz discovered that the patient had shown signs of psychosis for the past four years, eventually culminating in this moment.

“I talked to her teacher. They had been worried about the issue for several years but didn’t know what to do,” Cruz says. “And the family, understandably, was hoping she wasn’t experiencing this.

Cruz thought this situation was preventable. She examined the child’s environment, looking for places where intervention could have happened. She thought about who would have an objective view of the child’s behavior.

“That’s when I landed on schools.”

Cruz’s work has taken her all over the world, from UNC-Chapel Hill to India and the Philippines. She hopes to change the conversation by training teachers in low- and middle-income countries to incorporate mental health treatment into their curriculum, providing care as early as possible.

Tealeaves for thought

After the life-changing encounter with her 11-year-old patient, Cruz took a year off medical school to pursue a master’s degree in education. During this time, she was approached by one of her colleagues, Michael Matergia. He and his wife Denna were returning to Darjeeling, a town in the Indian Himalayas. After having lived in the region as teachers, they started a non-profit focused on the health and education of children in the region through the merging of the two fields.

Michael and Denna were targeting attributes of physical health, such as improved iron uptake and decreased rates of diarrhea. But during their time there, they saw that mental health was an issue that also needed to be addressed. That’s what led them to Cruz.

In a region like Darjeeling, the only consistent institution is the school system. There isn’t always medical or mental health care. So, Cruz spent a year searching for the answer to this question: Without increasing their burden, how can teachers support children with mental health concerns?

In the end, she and her colleagues arrived at Tealeaf, or Teachers Leading the Frontlines, a curriculum for teachers providing training in how to treat mental health symptoms.

In the beginning, it was about diagnosis and educating teachers about what they were seeing. But after working with Priscilla Giri, a Darjeeling local, Cruz decided the diagnostic route was not the right path to take.

Teachers wanted something practical, applicable, tangible. They wanted to know what to do in the moment of struggle, not what was causing it. Cruz and her colleagues changed their approach, focusing on behavior and treatment.

By combining her degrees in medicine and education, she was able to translate therapeutic techniques that were used by professionals into methods that could be used by teachers.

“It evolved from informing people about diagnosis to here is a tangible skillset to use,” Cruz says. “It doesn’t really matter if the child has anxiety or depression. It’s about the behavior they are exhibiting, and here are ways you can treat it.”

Say a student is having trouble completing assignments. Cruz and her partners have found this can be a common sign of mental health concerns with the students they work with — a type of avoidance behavior that can be a symptom of conditions like anxiety, depression and more.

The optimization of Tealeaf has reduced the necessity for teachers to provide a correct diagnosis. Instead, it trains them to treat the behavior itself.

For the student exhibiting trouble completing assignments, this can take the form of exposure therapy. The teacher can give the student small, easy assignments to build their confidence and comfort, and gradually scale up the size. The goal is that, eventually, the student will feel comfortable completing their regular assignments — an effective treatment regardless of the root cause.

This is the key to Tealeaf.

“I see this as a form of therapy, but the teachers we are working with simply see it as individualizing their pedagogy to the point where it lowers their burden,” Cruz says.

Early trials show in just one year that children receiving Tealeaf have gone from clinical levels of mental illness — meaning they might need to see a doctor or therapist — to neurotypical levels, exhibiting brain function considered to be usual or expected.

“They improve as if they have been going to one-on-one therapy for a year,” Cruz says. “That’s powerful because it shows there are different ways to improve and maintain mental well-being, even in places where you don’t have the resources to bring the latest technology or studies.”

Global mental health education

If the early data holds true, Cruz and her colleagues have created a method of mental health care that could change the world. While Tealeaf was made with and for Darjeeling, she believes it can be utilized everywhere. Through two internal funding sources secured this year at UNC-Chapel Hill, Cruz and her team can bring Tealeaf to public schools in Manila, Philippines.

The next step is to use a bigger trial to further show Tealeaf’s effectiveness. Afterward, Cruz plans to expand the program both inwardly by modifying the program to work for children in adolescence as opposed to elementary school and outwardly by moving to more global regions.

“It should be applicable everywhere there are teachers — and, hopefully, in different areas of the world,” Cruz says.

The method isn’t exclusive to low- and middle-income countries, either.

“It is absolutely applicable in wealthier countries like the United States and Western Europe,” she says. “In the United States, teachers are not required to have had exposure to mental health education. Some do; some don’t. But clearly, the students with mental health concerns will be in school.”

Cruz envisions Tealeaf being a part of her work for the rest of her life. Using Darjeeling and Manila as strongholds for the program, she hopes to see it spread around the globe.

Through this same method of systemic thinking and working with the resources available to this community, Cruz and her colleagues have started several offshoots of the Tealeaf project. This includes ways to make Tealeaf adaptable to students with autism and working with local farmers showing signs of mental health conditions related to climate change.

While Tealeaf could prove to be a massive step forward, Cruz stresses there is more to be done to address challenges like income disparity, poverty, racism, and sexism, to name a few.

“I want everybody to realize that while tackling mental health is an important cause, sometimes it’s only a Band-Aid,” Cruz says. “Mental health can be biological, but sometimes it’s also environmental. Solving the mental health issue doesn’t mean you’ve fixed the environment that caused it.”

For Cruz, Tealeaf is an expression of humanity. While there is concrete science and extensive research backing it, at its core Tealeaf is a way of caring for others. It’s training to make the interactions of non-therapists therapeutic. Suddenly, mental health treatment isn’t reserved for professionals but engrained in society itself, making it accessible, pervasive, and normalized.

“Tealeaf embodies the fact that mental health is in all our hands. For ourselves and each other. In the workplace, schools, home and peer settings. Help and care can be present everywhere.”

On the studio wall hangs an oversized tapestry. It depicts two giant chickens with female faces butchering a hog. Visting student Nina Scott’s take on it? “Girl boss grotesque.”

Scott, her four classmates and their professor, Kathryn Desplanque, are visiting the art studio of Molly English at Carolina’s Art Lab, north of main campus on Airport Road. The trip is stop No. 1 of 18 they are planning to various Triangle venues for Art History 290, “Loving Your Local Art Scene,” this Maymester.

While showcasing her work, English, a Master of Fine Arts student, points out recurring themes of animals and butchery and explains her evolution from a primarily paint-based artist. The students ask about her artistic inspirations, life in an MFA program and English’s creative process.

Next, the students carpool to meet another MFA student, photographer Matthew Troyer, and then to the FRANK Gallery in Carrboro.

“Maymester is the reason I can offer a class like this,” says Desplanque, an assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ art and art history department. “This class would be extremely difficult to offer during the traditional school year.”

For many Carolina faculty, Maymester means more than cramming a semester’s worth of instruction into two weeks. Thanks to simplified logistics, smaller class sizes and longer, more intensive sessions, instructors can experiment, take deeper dives and practice their craft with a twist.

“I enjoy it,” says Sarah Treul Roberts, the Bowman and Gordon Gray Term Professor in the College’s political science department, who teaches POLI 100, “American Democracy in Changing Times.” “I think it’s really fun to be able to teach the same course but in very different ways.”

Exploring art in the Triangle

Desplanque is her department’s 18th- and 19th-century European specialist, so she admits you wouldn’t necessarily expect her to create and teach a class involving contemporary American art. But she has an art practice herself and is active in the local art scene, which she applauds as inclusive and “really welcoming to new people.”

“This class is an opportunity for me to share the communities that I have been a part of the last several years in the Triangle,” Desplanque says.

In this inaugural edition of the course, Desplanque and her students are visiting many Triangle art spots, including the Pop Box Gallery in Durham, Artspace in Raleigh and Attic 506 in Chapel Hill.

In addition to the Triangle trips, students also learn about the sociology of art and changes to the structure of the art world over time.

Those lessons and experiences will inform a collective class project — an interactive local art map that Desplanque plans to launch as a publicly accessible website. For technological help, Desplanque turned to Philip McDaniel, a geographic information system librarian at Carolina. He gave her class access to a powerful mapmaking utility, StoryMap.

Once complete, the map will fill a need Desplanque recognized, allowing community members to learn more about the local art scene and what it has to offer.

“I think that more people would get involved in our local art scene if they had a cheat sheet to help them find where it’s happening, where it’s going on,” she says.

For Scott, the rising Hussman School of Journalism and Media senior who so colorfully characterized English’s tapestry, the mapping combines her interests of web design and art.

“I enjoy making knowledge accessible, and then it connects with my personal desire to create art and maybe one day have my art in a gallery,” Scott says.

Maymester student Nina Scott (far right) says the goal of the class “is to find and explore these art spaces, make connections with the people and then make it more accessible.” (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

Bringing public discourse to life

Treul Roberts often tells her POLI 100 students that “American democracy requires robust public discourse.” When she teaches the course in the fall or spring semesters, she’s usually addressing a room full of 100-plus students, typical for an introductory-level class.

Sarah Treul Roberts

But during Maymester, when her audience drops to the teens, the robust public discourse really happens, Treul Roberts says.

As during a typical semester, the course provides an overview and discussion of topics like the origins of the U.S. government, its political institutions and political behavior. But in May, Treul Roberts and her students engage in lively but cordial discussions — she asks students to sign a code of conduct to “listen charitably to one another” — on everything from the Supreme Court to the meaning of the Constitution to the Electoral College.

With longer class periods and students not balancing their time with other courses, they’re “essentially living, breathing, sleeping American democracy,” she says.

Because Maymester is so brief, Treul Roberts sometimes wonders how many facts will stick with her students. But she believes that’s where the value of the engaging class dialogues and public discord kicks in. Those interactions, she says, they’ll remember.

“I sometimes get people taking Maymester courses [because they] need course credit,” Treul Roberts says. “But they end up enjoying the class, and I do see them in upper-level classes later on.”

Diving into Durham’s development

For those taking Nina Martin’s Geography 429 course, “Urban Political Geography: Durham, N.C.,” theory quickly becomes practice. Students immerse themselves in downtown Durham, studying the development of one of the South’s most rapidly transforming cities.

Nina Martin

Early in the course, Martin leads students on a walking tour of downtown and other nearby areas, including the historically Black Hayti neighborhood. They discuss how and why Durham is changing and the associated consequences.

From there, students work with a nonprofit organization, Downtown Durham Inc., serving as consultants and writing a report on migration into Durham from large population centers across the United States and its impact on the local community. The work involves data analysis and online mapping among other skills. The class then presents the report to the organization’s board.

“The depth of the experience is going to be really meaningful for them because they’ll be engaging with this material and thinking about this city, its issues and its potential for three hours a day,” says Martin, an associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the College’s geography department.

That sort of experiential learning is important for students, Martin says. It’s one thing to read from a textbook or a case study on urban development in large U.S. cities like Los Angeles or Chicago. But doing work themselves in a city like Durham, a place that Martin says doesn’t typically get studied as much because it’s Southern and smaller, can give students an appreciation of how the concepts they learn about play out in real time.

“I think they like the experience of going and actually just seeing somewhere and getting out of the classroom and being able to connect some of the things we talk about in the classroom — the readings we do — with an actual place,” she says.

Students taking “Urban Political Geography: Durham, N.C.” learn about the city’s history and continuous transformation, taking walking tours and writing a report on migration patterns for a nonprofit organization. (Photo courtesy of Nina Martin)

(Chapel Hill, N.C.— May 18, 2023) – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has secured a seven-year, $70 million Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health to accelerate high-impact research that improves human health and advances health equity. The latest grant will provide continued funding for the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute, the academic hub of the CTSA program at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine.

The successful grant application is a partnership between UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State University and N.C. A&T State University. The new funding renews Carolina’s membership in the CTSA Program, an elite consortium of academic medical research institutions working together to transform the way biomedical research is conducted across the country. The CTSA program is funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, one of 27 Institutes and Centers at the National Institutes of Health and was established to transform the processes by which science is translated to policy and practice so that new therapies and cures can be delivered to all patients faster.

Translating scientific discoveries into new treatments and approaches to medical care is a complex and time-consuming process. Even when innovations become universally available, the benefits of these advances often do not reach all populations equally, and there are significant levels of disparity for historically marginalized groups. With the new award, Carolina’s CTSA will lead and support efforts to create a more efficient, inclusive research environment, involving diverse populations at all stages to ensure that science benefits all communities.

“The NC TraCS Institute is an exemplary model of Carolina’s leadership in research that benefits all people in our state and across the nation,” says UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz, Ph.D., M.S. “This continued funding will allow NC TraCS to continue their groundbreaking work, make new discoveries and grow their impact by embodying our commitment to collaboration that solves the grand challenges of our time.”

Launched in 2006, the CTSA program has enabled innovative research teams to speed up discovery and advance science aimed at improving the nation’s health. Institutional CTSA awards are at the heart of the program, providing academic hubs for translational sciences. The program currently supports a consortium of more than 60 academic medical institutions that foster collaborative efforts and leverage national resources.

NC TraCS will use the grant to examine the science of translational science. The focus of the new grant is to generate information that would be broadly applicable to multiple different research groups, not just for one question at one point in time. For example, models that can predict which patients might suffer from a certain disease or treatment complication are valuable tools but are often underused by clinicians. NC TraCS will provide support, resources and expertise to researchers who plan to study the best way to bring the power of these models to patients to help chart the best course of treatment, a process known as “wayfinding.”

“For the last 15 years, NC TraCS has worked to enhance our clinical research infrastructure, capacity, and efficiency at UNC and our partners, NC A&T and NC State University,” said Nick Shaheen, M.D., MPH., Co-Principal Investigator of NC TraCS. “We are excited to have this new funding to focus on the most compelling health issues of our time – effectively, expediently and efficiently translating science toward clinical practice and health policy for all those we serve.”

Since its inception, NC TraCS, has fundamentally changed the clinical and translational research landscape, locally and across the state. During that time, UNC-Chapel Hill has seen a 58% increase in total research awards (over $1.1 billion in 2021) and a corresponding increase in NIH funding (over $538 million in 2021). Its outreach efforts have touched each of North Carolina’s 100 counties. NC TraCS mobilized its expertise and infrastructure to rapidly generate new knowledge and interventions in response to the COVID pandemic, earning UNC-Chapel Hill the highest ranking among U.S. universities for the impact of its coronavirus work.

“This new cycle of funding reflects our dedication to streamlining translational and clinical research for the benefit of our patients in North Carolina and beyond,” said Blossom Damania, PhD, vice dean for research at the UNC School of Medicine. “The expertise, knowledge and capabilities we have to perform clinical research are unsurpassed.”

The CTSA program originally focused on helping its academic hubs put systems in place to support researchers as they move their findings along the path from understanding the biological basis of disease to disseminating interventions that improve the health of individuals and the public. With this new cycle of awards, NCATS has shifted its focus to actively studying these systems, examining each step along the translational pathway to identify and overcome barriers.

“The new program expands incentivizing and facilitating our translational science in order to accelerate research from the laboratory to clinics and communities, getting safe and effective medications, devices and diagnostics into the hands of people most in need,” explains Vice Chancellor of Research Penny Gordon-Larsen, Ph.D. “Carolina’s commitment to research for the public good makes our university the ideal place for this new program, and it is a tremendous honor that the NIH has entrusted TraCS to serve as one of the leaders of this shift towards more translational science.”

-Carolina-

About the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the nation’s first public university, is a global higher education leader. Carolina is passionately public, with a commitment to ensuring that every student who earns admission can come to Carolina and thrive. Addressing the greatest challenges of our time through innovative teaching, research and public service, Carolina is an engine of opportunity for the next generation of students, the economy and innovation in North Carolina and beyond. A member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, Carolina regularly ranks as the best value for academic quality in U.S. public higher education. The nearly 356,000 alumni of Carolina’s 15 schools including the College of Arts and Sciences live in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. Territories and 161 countries. Nearly 193,000 live in North Carolina.

University Communications: Media Relations, 919-445-8555, [email protected]

About the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute

A grant-funded institute founded as a service to the research community – guiding you through clinical trials and regulatory approval, all the way to implementation in patient care. We do this by being a catalytic partner that educates, funds, connects, and supports researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill, our state, and the U.S.

We enable researchers, stakeholders, and communities to innovate prevention, diagnostic, treatment, and implementation strategies and to translate findings to policy and practice. We train and empower a diverse workforce across the full spectrum of research disciplines, to effectively address ongoing and emerging public health concerns.

NC TraCS Institute is supported by NCATS and the NIH through Grant Award Number UM1TR004406. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

To learn more about NC TraCS, visit https://tracs.unc.edu/

For almost 50 years, you could count on something Southern and savory to eat from Mama Dip’s Kitchen in Chapel Hill. The late Mildred “Mama Dip” Council described herself in a book as born colored, growing up Negro, becoming a Black adult and then, an American. And hungry folks from all backgrounds loved her food.

But Mama Dip’s food dynasty is about to undergo some big changes. The restaurant and land around it are up for sale — the asking price is $3.6 million.

Mama Dip has eight children. The baby of the bunch is Spring Council. At 66 years old, she has her mother’s kind demeanor and her height — Spring is 6’2. I spoke with Spring to get some insight on the Big Sale and the future of Mama Dip‘s Kitchen.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Leoneda Inge: “So you’re the baby. You’re Mama Dip’s baby. That means it is understandable that you are taking care of business right now.”

Spring Council: “Yes, taking care of business because I always hung out with my mom. She always called me to go with her, like when she did the UNC-TV shows. I traveled with her on cookbook tours. So she has always asked for me to come along with her.”

Inge: “And it seems you have always sat close to her as well, when she was running her business.”

Council: “Yes. When she first opened, Dip’s Country Kitchen, when it first started, it was just the two of us.”

Inge: “Wow! So everybody else was out of high school, gone, married with their own kids. And you were the one still at home.”

Council: “Yeah, with Mom. Actually, she was at Bill’s Bar-B-Q with my dad and she decided to leave the business and leave him. Then she went and opened Dip’s Country Kitchen. I was still working for my dad. Once I was at work and thought about my mom down the street by herself — she used to drop me off at Bill’s — the next day I went down and sat with her.”

1 of 5

From left to right, siblings Annette Council, Joe Council, Spring Council, and Sandra Council.

Kate Medley / WUNC

2 of 5

Spring Council and her siblings, all co-owners of Mama Dip’s Kitchen in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, have recently put the Rosemary Street building up for sale. Mama Dip was the nickname of Mildred Council who opened the restaurant in 1976, and passed away in 2018.

Kate Medley / WUNC

3 of 5

Spring Council and her siblings, all co-owners of Mama Dip’s Kitchen in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, have recently put the Rosemary Street building up for sale. Mama Dip was the nickname of Mildred Council who opened the restaurant in 1976, and passed away in 2018.

Kate Medley / WUNC

4 of 5

Spring Council and her siblings, all co-owners of Mama Dip’s Kitchen in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, have recently put the Rosemary Street building up for sale. Mama Dip was the nickname of Mildred Council who opened the restaurant in 1976, and passed away in 2018.

Kate Medley / WUNC

5 of 5

Spring Council and her siblings, all co-owners of Mama Dip’s Kitchen in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, have recently put the Rosemary Street building up for sale. Mama Dip was the nickname of Mildred Council who opened the restaurant in 1976, and passed away in 2018.

Kate Medley / WUNC

Inge: “I could only assume, that you probably know the restaurant and food business better than almost anybody, definitely in the Triangle. I think of the different places that have come and gone over the years. But I think you have got a lot of good training, Spring.”

Council: “Yes, I have. I pretty much worked in every aspect of the restaurant business. From washing dishes, to bookkeeping, doing all of our social media, building our website. I’ve always read a lot of business books. I like to read and did that all the time. And being close to my mom, learning how to cook under her wings. So, yes.”

Inge: “I have to ask you, what’s your favorite thing to cook that your mom taught you?”

Council: “What I like to cook is braised beef short ribs. That’s one of the things, when I was a kid, I used to always beg her to make it when the holiday came around. I said, ‘Mama, please, please make this.’ And she would. So if I were to go back home, I’ll make braised beef short ribs. We don’t sell those in the restaurant, but we have sold them. I really like that a lot. At the restaurant, I would have to say the chicken and dumplings.”

Inge: “Yeah! I have been in the kitchen when they were pulling the chicken to make the chicken and dumplings. Are you surprised by all the phone calls, and the messages and the emails after word got out that Mama Dip’s Kitchen — I guess you’re selling that land. It just won’t be what we remember."

Council: “Right, yes. I was expecting all the phone calls. I know that people was going to be surprised since we have, you know, kept things going since her passing, which was in 2018. And we had the idea to keep it going. We got through the pandemic, really good. Things are back to normal. But then we started thinking about the shortages of staffing and other issues."

Inge: “I thought about that because one thing I remember knowing is that generations of family always worked at that restaurant. But I also know that across the country the shortage in workers is crucial. Many places have closed down because of that. And I thought, well, maybe that’s not a problem at Dip’s.”

Council: “There was a problem. It’s a big problem. And the thing about it, we know so much about the restaurant business. Mama had us cross-trained so we could fill-in any position. But we’re at retirement age now. And then a lot of times, that next generation, they decide they can do something else and don’t necessarily want to be in the restaurant business. It’s really hard work.”

Inge: “Maybe you can tell me more about the impetus to sell that land. I’m not crazy, I know that’s downtown Chapel Hill and I’ve seen Chapel Hill grow up around the restaurant in the past few years. What really kicked in and made you list that property?”

1 of 2

Spring Council and her siblings, all co-owners of Mama Dip’s Kitchen in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, have recently put the Rosemary Street building up for sale. Mama Dip was the nickname of Mildred Council who opened the restaurant in 1976, and passed away in 2018.

Kate Medley / WUNC

2 of 2

Spring Council and her siblings, all co-owners of Mama Dip’s Kitchen in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, have recently put the Rosemary Street building up for sale.

Kate Medley / WUNC

Council: “Well, it was a family decision. We all had a vote and the majority rules and that is what that was about. And for me, I voted ‘no,’ but then in the process of getting over that, the ‘yes’ vote, I had to have a change of mindset and say, where do we go from here.”

Inge: “So who got a vote? The eight siblings?”

Council: “Well, it’s eight siblings and two grandkids.”

Inge: “Wow. I’m not going to ask you the breakdown of the vote!”

Council: “Ok! Thank you.”

Inge: “So now, [what] are your plans? Have you been thinking about what you want the Mama Dip’s name and franchise to be from now on?”

Council: “We’re looking at going to ‘fast casual.’ My grandfather’s restaurant and the restaurant my parents took over, Bill’s Bar-B-Q, that was a ‘fast casual’ restaurant. So we do have experience in that. And looking at the ‘fast casual,’ sort of reduce the amount of staff you’re going to need. And then it reduces our menu to the most popular items so that we can easily train people to prepare the food. And we can step back.”

Inge: “And step back a little. I was going to ask you what ‘fast casual’ is. It’s not fast food, because I know it’s nothing fast about the food you have cooked over the years. So maybe you can define ‘fast casual.”

Council: “So we’re looking at reducing our menu, keeping our same fresh food we serve at Mama Dip’s. And rather than people sitting down to place an order, they go up to the counter and order their food, wait at the table until it’s ready. There may be some items they can pick up right away and take to the table to eat or carry out.”

Inge: “So what are you going to miss about that spot in Chapel Hill, on Rosemary [Street] once it’s gone and you’re not cooking there and greeting people and serving anymore?”

Council: “Mama’s presence and the customers, greeting the customers. We worked so much, six days a week and so when people came into the restaurant, we befriended them and they befriended us. So that’s where our conversations would come from. Our customers and of course, Mama’s presence in the building.”

Inge: “You know you sound like her. Do people tell you that?

Council: “Yes.”

Offers for the Chapel Hill Mama Dip's Kitchen have already started coming in. Stay tuned; one day there could be a smaller, leaner Mama Dip’s Kitchen near you.