It was a whirlwind that generally takes business owners months or years to develop, but Justin Taylor and Brent Chester opened Project 47 Smokehouse located at 101 N. Lombard St. in under a week.
Once Main Street Wingery closed last week, Walker and Chester enlisted the help of family and friends to revamp the space. By installing needed kitchen equipment, revamping the seating and painting, the team was able to open for lunch today.
Taylor, who also owns JT Walker’s Restaurant and Brewery, said he was not interested in opening another restaurant not too long ago. But when the opportunity to put another restaurant just down the street from his already established restaurant came up, Taylor jumped at the opportunity.
“People asked me to open something somewhere else, but time wise, for me, it didn’t make sense,” he said. “But being on the same street in Mahomet, I have the same reps for everything and I am dealing with all the same people.”
Taylor reached out to Chester, who is also a Mahomet native, to see if he’d be interested in developing a menu for the new restaurant with him. Chester also owns Chester’s BBQ, which was served at Walker’s Brewery for months.
“I knew someone would come into this space, so I wanted to make sure it was done well so hopefully it helps build everything else up in Mahomet,” Taylor said.
With a robust menu at JT Walker’s, Taylor and Chester wanted to offer something different to Mahomet. Chester’s BBQ made a run in Mahomet via Walker’s Brewery over the last couple years. Chester expanded on his menu by adding brisket, pulled chicken and by creating signature sauces for Project 47.
Chester has his rotisserie at Project 47 right now, but soon he will have a smoker inside the kitchen.
Taylor wanted to keep Chester’s nachos, the Cuban sandwich, and Honey BBQ on the menu, but with additions such as fried cheese curds, half chickens and flatbreads, Project 47 differs from the menus found at Walker’s and Chester’s BBQ.
Dishes come with Project 47’s signature sauce Apple Butter BBQ, but everything can be ordered without sauce so that guests can try on of the 6 signature sauces on the table. Some dishes also come with special sauces, such as the White BBQ sauce, which is made from Horseradish, and a Raspberry sauce.
“It brings more variety, and hopefully it brings more people because there is variety and we’re doing it well, hopefully,” Walker said.
Because so many people asked for pizzas at JT Walker’s, Project 47 also sells flatbreads with a flare.
“They’re not your classic thin crust pizza,” Taylor said. “All of them have a different sauce as a base. Even our basic, which is a pepperoni, smoked sausage and bacon pizza, it has smoked marinara as a base sauce.”
Coming up with the menu was the easy part, but deciding on a name took some time. Taylor said they wanted to incorporate 47 as the restaurant is located on IL-47, but they threw around “a million” ideas on exactly what to call it.
Interested in Project 47, as the restaurant is a “project” for both men, Chester researched a WWII plane called the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. The restaurant’s logo includes a thunderbolt in commemoration of the plane. Project 47 also offers a 10% discount for Veterans every day.
Taylor said once things calm down, they would like to expand on decorating a wall to include information about local Veterans and Walker’s Brewery will also produce the P47 Thunderbolt IPA to be sold in house.
They also settled on calling Project 47 a “smokehouse” because “while we do have barbecue, not everything is barbecue; we smoke our meats, it doesn’t mean everything has barbecue on it.”
Also on the plate for Project 47 is catering and take-out through a Project 47 app.
But for both Walker and Chester, being a part of the growth in their hometown has been rewarding.
“I saw some census numbers the other day and in 1980, when I was born, the population in Mahomet was 2400,” Taylor said. “It’s crazy to think about that. When I got to the end of high school, we had the biggest classes that Mahomet had ever seen. When my dad went to high school here in the 60’s, he had 25, 40 people in his class. When I graduated, we had 200 people in our class. It was just unheard of.”
“As the town grew, people would say, “Why are there not more businesses here?” I think it was, for a long time, we were so close to Champaign that there wasn’t a reason to do it. And the town was so small that it was actually hard to keep those businesses going.”
“When I opened JT Walker’s, People would say you’ll never make it because nothing here has ever made it. But once we got past that 3-year mark of trying to get our feet under us, everyone realized there is something.”
“Growing up here, there were people who had never driven down Main Street their whole life. As people have started to refurbish the buildings, I think it’s made a huge difference in downtown Mahomet where there wasn’t really a shopping district or a place to go.”
“I think it’s great that people are seeing there is an opportunity in Mahomet now. I think a lot of people thought ‘I’m just wasting my money; there isn’t anything that will work there,’ but now people are seeing there is value.”
“Where the proximity to Champaign hurt us early on, I think it’s helping us now. You can get those people from Champaign, Gibson City, Monticello because it’s only 10/15 minutes away.”
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