ELIZABETHTOWN – Another sign of growth in Elizabethtown is the addition of a new business.

This one is The Brickhouse Seafood & Café located at 315 Martin Luther King Boulevard birthed by two entrepreneurs who already have three other businesses established.

John and Rochelle Pridgen are a couple that hail from the East Coast, her from New Jersey and he from New York.

“I have family from here,” he said. “After college (Hampton University in Virginia) I came to follow my sister who had moved here. Then my mother came.”

Pridgen went to college and majored in business management.

“I started with computer science and programming before I switched to business management,” he said.

Rochelle waited until a year after high school and then moved to North Carolina.

“It was just a change of scenery and I knew the cost of living was a lot cheaper down here,” she said. “I just wanted to move away and try something different.”

After the move she ended up taking college classes in Durham and began majoring in nursing, but went on to work full time in medical administration with the federal government.

The couple met, fell in love and have been together for 17 years. Their business endeavors have kept them busy along with Rochelle working full time in the medical field as an administrator.

The other businesses that the couple own are, Jay Michael Custom Imprints located at 203B S. Poplar Street in Elizabethtown, JRQ Auto world, a car lot at 2907 W. Broad Street and finally, a seasonal smoothie business named Fruitastic

The Jay Michael business has been a part of the Pridgens for 15 years and it began in Raleigh/Durham area.

“I had an epiphany and realized it was more economical to come here and do my production here with my T-shirt business,” he said. “I got here and started passing buildings and I started seeing other businesses that could be reality.”

Although it keeps the couple busy, she said she gets a bit nervous when he starts putting on his entrepreneurial hat.

The couple still resides in the Durham/Raleigh area and she said that at times, that makes it hard for them to be together as much as they’d like.

Brickhouse is an offshoot of an earlier venture put together by Pridgen who opened JR’s Grill in Tarheel for a year in the midst of running Jay Michaels. In that business, he found it hard to find and keep helpers and finally decided to close the business.

It did give him a good taste of what running an actual restaurant might be like, and he liked the idea. He also said that Rochelle had always wondered what it would be like to run a food business.

To make a long story short, the ribbon was officially cut Nov. 15 in Elizabethtown. Rochelle runs the business administration and John oversees makes sure things are running smoothly. So far, so good, he said.

Another deciding factor to open the restaurant is John’s son, Tyrone Love who has been cooking on the East Coast for close to 13 years and was once a chef for the Philadelphia Eagles among other big seafood restaurants.

“He always had this thing about cooking,” Pridgen said. “I watch and I see that he really wants to cook and he is so good at it. See, I knew that Rochelle wanted to own a restaurant, my son wanted to cook, and I am pretty much the entrepreneur who makes it all happen.”

As for why the couple decided to go with a seafood restaurant, Pridgen said it was do to researching the area.

“I was asking around and everyone said that they needed a seafood restaurant,” he said. “I wanted to do a New York pizza shop, but everyone here including my family told me to head toward seafood. Now, I have an administrator who is my better half and her job was to hold a hiring fair which turned out very well and the restaurant is full of good employees.”

The restaurant began more as a lunch menu and has evolved, slowly adding new things each week such as a breakfast menu.

“We’ve been getting very good reviews on our food,” he said. “I think the thing that helps us out the most is the fact that we have my son who creates his own specialty sauces. He has a Brickhouse sauce that everybody wants. He also makes his own seafood breading. So, our food is a little bit different than everyone else’s. It’s like a small family-owned business. We have family here that we feature their baking.”

The restaurant is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday – Saturday and for questions or to place orders, you can call 910- 247-6106.