Smith Burger Co. Location on Mahomet’s Main Street Now Open
- 36 minutes ago
- 3 min read
A long-awaited day has come for the Mahomet community: Smith Burger Company opens on Main Street today, July 29, with service from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mahomet will host the popular restaurant’s third brick-and-mortar location, in addition to its presence at Collective Pour in Champaign and The Yard on Broadway in Urbana. Jessica and Drew Smith first opened Smith Burger Co. as a food truck in December 2020, and their business has grown ever since.
The Mahomet location felt like the perfect next step, according to Leah Smith, daughter of Jessica and Drew. She explained that the restaurant was ready to expand outside of Champaign-Urbana. Mahomet allows the restaurant to draw diners from smaller towns farther out from C-U while helping the Smiths work toward one of their long-term goals: expanding into Bloomington. The Mahomet location puts them nearer to that goal while still feeling close enough for their day-one supporters to travel to a new spot.
As for the location on Main Street, the two-story building will “blend our two [existing] locations together,” Smith said. Downstairs will feel similar to their location at Collective Pour, while the upstairs incorporates the mood of The Yard, with arcade games for kids and a large mural. Both levels have open seating, with the option to order at the counter or via QR code from your table.
Smith Burger Co. is embracing the character of a new setup in an old building. Customers will recognize changes that have been made to the space previously occupied by Chophouse on Main. The main counter and soda fountain are oriented where a fireplace was previously located. Some updates remain to be made: the outdoor roof patio, which will see improvements soon, will not be open immediately. Additionally, a 21+ gambling room is in development for the upstairs space.
The restaurant also boasts a newly-constructed interior door that connects the downstairs with their Main Street neighbor, The Main Scoop. Customers at Smith Burger Co. will be able to place orders for ice cream from their tables and will receive a text when it’s ready to pick up, either at The Main Scoop counter or even right at that interior door.
The collaboration between the two businesses was inspired by their proximity to each other at The Yard. Drew Smith noted that “the trucks brought them together,” referencing their overlapping food truck presence throughout the C-U area, but it was The Yard that “got them directly working together.” Jessica Hanson, who owns and operates The Main Scoop with her husband Nick, described how customers purchasing burgers at The Yard would “naturally flow over” to the Main Scoop for milkshakes or ice cream. They wanted to replicate this ease of pairing dinner and dessert at the Mahomet location, without patrons having to leave one storefront for another. Hanson suggested that parents could even send their kids over to grab ice cream as families continued a leisurely dinner at Smith Burger Co.
Beyond ice cream, the couples’ like-minded business models keep this collaboration sweet. When asked what excited her about the Smiths joining Mahomet’s Main Street, Hanson reminisced on The Main Scoop’s own origin as a small business, which first opened in Mahomet in 2021 and now has locations in Monticello, Urbana, and Paxton. “We knew we wanted to be locally-owned, family-owned, for people to know us,” she said, noting that our community rallies around locally-owned businesses. The Smiths, who were born and raised in Urbana, will feel that love from our community, Hanson suggested. “I just think it’s really exciting to have two locally-owned restaurants that partner in a lot of areas in Champaign-Urbana.”