Most people ask off for Thanksgiving. In Beaufort Co., restaurant workers cash in
For as many years as he can remember, Brandon Ashcraft has been working in a restaurant kitchen on Thanksgiving Day.
“I’ve probably spent a majority of Thanksgivings, Mother’s Days, Christmas Eves in restaurants for the last 10 years,” said Ashcraft, a sous chef at Bluffton’s Frankie Bones restaurant.
Such a tradition runs in the family. Many of his relatives are in the restaurant business, and when he was a child, his grandmother owned one in Jasper County.
This year, he’ll be pulling long hours to get the turkey and fixins’ on the table for the 400-plus patrons who have made Thanksgiving Day reservations at Frankie Bones. Then, he plans to drive home to see his family.
“It’s about a week of prep leading up to the day, and hopefully on the day that it comes we’re just so prepared that everything just moves flawlessly,” Ashcraft said. “Usually, for me, it consists of 12- to 13-hour days.”
Frankie Bones is one of many Lowcountry restaurants that will be open Thanksgiving Day. Especially in a tourist destination like Hilton Head Island, it’s common for restaurants to offer fixed-price gourmet meals to patrons, some of whom travel to the Lowcountry for Thanksgiving every year.
In many parts of the country, food service workers clamor to have Thanksgiving Day off, but the whimsy and bustle of a well-planned feast attracts many area restaurant employees to work that day, where they’re rewarded with good pay and a fun atmosphere. Ashcraft said kitchen staff get paid time-and-a-half and speculated that patrons, feeling the Thanksgiving spirit, tip the wait staff better.
“It’s just a joyous atmosphere because everybody’s excited for the day, for the week,” said Liz Ross Purcell, a bartender at Sea Pines’ oceanfront Coast restaurant. “I’ve been at the beach club for so many years, it’s a family in a way, because you see some of the same people year after year after year.”
Ross Purcell estimated she has worked 25 Thanksgivings since moving to Hilton Head 31 years ago. She said patrons, many of whom retreat to Hilton Head for the whole week, turn up for a break from Thanksgiving food — Coast serves its usual menu — and to frolic on the beach.
“Sometimes it’s their second home, and they bring the family down here,” she said. “Other people want to get away and just want to have a little intimate something.”
At Coast, Ross Purcell said, it’s not just empty nesters and young couples who go out on Thanksgiving.
“It’s everybody and their pets,” she said. “We know how fashionable that is these days.”
At WiseGuys on Hilton Head Island, junior sous chef Skylar Ganzel is working to prepare six 22-pound turkeys for the Thanksgiving feast.
“It’s a lot of preparation, and also a lot of space in the kitchen that it takes up, because we have our regular stuff and then everything for that day,” Ganzel said.
She said WiseGuys expects 120 families total, between dine in and take out. Tourists come with their families, but “Locals do, too,” Ganzel said, “because some people just don’t want to put in the effort. They want to spend time with their families.”
An aspiring chef, Ganzel said her favorite things about Thanksgiving work are the food and sense of community.
Ashcraft said he most enjoyed bringing community to those without family nearby.
“There’s some older people who really can’t cook for themselves, and they get to come out and have a traditional Thanksgiving and be at least with some of the people they love, and that is a cool part of it for me,” he said. “There’s tradition behind it, too. It’s the one day that’s really centered around food in the entire country, and as a chef, I think that’s pretty cool.”
