Living their dream

After 41 years as business partners and 44 years as life partners, Cameron and June Carr, both 64, said they were ready for a change.

Selling their business, Homewood’s longtime lunch spot O’Carr’s, was out of the question. So they decided on the opposite: expand.

The Carrs brought their business downtown in mid-July with their second location on 18th Street next to the Alabama Theatre and across from the newly restored Lyric Theatre. 

The new location serves as a replacement for the 9-year-old Cahaba Heights O’Carr’s that closed at the end of April. In addition to hosting O’Carr’s, the downtown property will include two loft spaces on the second floor and the Carrs’ new home on the third. The couple lives in Southside and said now that they’re empty nesters, it seemed like the perfect time to downsize.

“When June and I host meals for our friends, we usually do it in the restaurant,” Cameron Carr said. “And now that we’re downtown, it’s just going to be spectacular because we only have to come downstairs.”

18th Street isn’t O’Carr’s first experience in downtown Birmingham. Back in 2010, when the Carrs were dabbling in franchising, Birmingham lawyer Lew Garrison opened an O’Carr’s in the Title Building at the corner of Third Avenue North and Richard Arrington Jr. Boulevard. 

That O’Carr’s closed after one year, and the Carrs have been itching to get back downtown ever since.  

“When we first bought the buildings, we thought it’d be great to open an O’Carr’s there,” Cameron Carr said. “Then we had some ups and downs, and we kept saying, ‘We’re going to do the project; no, we’re going to sell the building,’ and we went back and forth. Finally we decided we needed to quit overthinking and just do the project.” 

Now that the Homewood institution has planted roots downtown, the Carrs said there will be some changes fitting for the new location. For one, the restaurant will be double the square footage of its “postage stamp-sized” counterpart in Homewood. 

In terms of design, the downtown O’Carr’s will undergo a modern makeover with exposed brick, polished concrete floors and high open-beamed ceilings. As for the menu, the Carrs plan to expand from their signature lunch options of soups, salads and sandwiches to include more hot items. Eventually, the couple plans to serve both breakfast and dinner in addition to lunch.  

Even with all its new bells and whistles, the main purpose and philosophy behind O’Carr’s will remain the same. 

“The thing about being a business here in Homewood is that we’re a neighborhood restaurant,” Cameron Carr said. “For downtown, it’s my goal that we become a neighborhood restaurant there, too.”

For the Carrs, meals are vehicles for conversation, and they’ve had plenty of those over the past 41 years in Homewood. They said some of their best friends started out as customers. 

Walking into Homewood’s O’Carr’s, it seems Cameron and June Carr are, in fact, everyone’s best friend. Their work is continuously punctuated with greetings to friends and customers (to the Carrs, they’re one and the same) who have stopped in for lunch.

In addition to the friendships they’ve built, Cameron and June Carr have grown their family alongside their business. They said they raised their daughter as well as their granddaughter in the restaurant. 

Of their three grandchildren, two work in the restaurant, and most recently their great granddaughter, Junica, has caught the restaurant bug. She often visits the Homewood location and helps out by greeting customers, handing out menus, and doing her favorite job: sweeping.

“When she comes in, the first thing she does is get her hair net and apron on,” Cameron Carr said. “Then she goes and talks with all the ladies for a second, washes her hands and starts sweeping up with her little broom. Just last week I asked her if she could help sweep some leaves at our house and she said, ‘Papa, sweeping is my life.’” 

With his wife as his business partner and the rest of his family involved, Cameron Carr said he’s learned quickly when to take 6-year-old Junica’s advice and just zip it. 

“The trick is if we’re having a problem here, you have to get it solved pretty quick because we’re living together, and the same goes if we’re having a problem at home,” he said. “Everything little can’t be a hill to die on.”

The Carrs said the completion of their new project downtown is like a family finally building their dream home. 

“If someone told us to draw a picture of our dream house, this [the Homewood O’Carr’s] would have been it, but luckily we have the opportunity for our dreams to change,” Cameron Carr said. “And now this [the downtown O’Carr’s] is the realization of that.”