There is a version of Zunzi’s that lives rent-free in the memory of anyone who has ever eaten there. You know the one. The cramped little shop on York Street where the line snaked out the door and down the sidewalk in the Savannah heat. Where they yelled your name when your order was up. Where the Conquistador sandwich — a triumph of South African-inspired flavors that had no business being this good in a no-frills takeout joint — cost you roughly the change in your pocket and felt like the best meal you’d eaten all year. Where you washed it down with a sweet tea and maybe grabbed a bottle of that sauce on the way out.

That Zunzi’s was not just a restaurant. It was a Savannah institution. A hole-in-the-wall with a cult following. Award-winning food served in a cardboard box by people who didn’t pretend to be anything other than what they were. No table service, no craft cocktail menu, no ambiance to speak of — just exceptional food made by people who cared deeply about it. Founders Johnny and Gabby built something genuinely beloved, and for a long time, that was more than enough.

Then they got tired.

And that’s where Chris Smith entered the story.

Smith was already a successful Savannah restaurateur — a Five Guys franchisee who had built seven locations in the region — when he fell in love with Zunzi’s as a customer. It was 2008, and he was opening his second Five Guys when he waited in line, ate the best sandwich of his life, and had an idea. “Someday I’m gonna buy this restaurant,” he told himself, “and franchise it and grow it.”

He spent years building a relationship with Johnny and Gabby. When they finally approached him ready to sell — “they were going to close up shop,” Smith told me — he stepped in and saved Zunzi’s from disappearing entirely. That part of the story doesn’t get told enough. There might be no Zunzi’s at all right now if he hadn’t.

But Smith never wanted to just run a sandwich shop. He wanted to build something that could scale. And that’s when the tension began.

The first attempt at growth was straightforward: open an Atlanta location in 2018 and take what worked in Savannah to a new market. It worked brilliantly — until it didn’t. Sales cratered from strong numbers to roughly $5,000 a week in about three months. “The menu and the model just didn’t work,” Smith says now, with the flat honesty of someone who has had time to process the scar tissue. Something about transplanting the concept without the built-in Savannah loyalty exposed weaknesses he hadn’t seen.

Then COVID hit. Smith closed Atlanta and refocused on downtown Savannah. Then he lost the lease on the original location. Out of that disruption — and out of a clear-eyed look at what inflation and cost of goods were about to do to the restaurant industry — Zunzibar was born.

The idea made sense on paper. Take the award-winning food people already loved, build a proper bar program around it, create a fun, elevated experience that could generate higher revenue per customer and work in markets that had never heard of Zunzi’s. A great bar manager who had worked at Artillery — widely considered one of Savannah’s finest cocktail destinations — came on board. A nationally recognized beverage director joined the team. The bar operation, Smith says with evident pride, is “best in class. Up there with an Artillery or any of the best bars in Savannah.”

And so Zunzibar opened downtown. Then on Tybee Island. Then on Hilton Head. Seventeen franchises were sold in central and west coast Florida. Signed leases went into Jupiter and Jacksonville.

The empire was being built. Except for one stubborn problem.

The people of Savannah didn’t necessarily want an empire. They wanted their sandwiches.

This is the part of the story that doesn’t show up in a press release. When longtime Zunzi’s fans walked into Zunzibar, they weren’t always sure what they were looking at. The vibe was different. The menu felt different. The experience of sitting down with a craft cocktail and shareable plates is, fundamentally, a different proposition than grabbing a Conquistador in a takeout box on your lunch break. These are not the same customer. They don’t necessarily overlap.

Worse, the blended identity created confusion in both directions. Old-school Savannah didn’t fully embrace the cocktail bar evolution. And new markets — the Florida franchisees, the Hilton Head experiment — were being introduced to a concept that wasn’t quite sure what it was yet. Hilton Head, he says, exposed the core problem: “The menu doesn’t work. It’s just too one dimensional.” A restaurant executive he knew put it bluntly, telling Smith that every menu needs its “cores and whores” — the signature brand items that define you, and the broader crowd-pleasers that fill the room for everyone else. Zunzibar had leaned so hard into its identity as a sandwich shop that it hadn’t built the architecture of a full bar-and-dining experience.

The other mismatch: eating a big sandwich out of a takeout box doesn’t pair naturally with a $14 craft cocktail. Smith heard it from his own customers when he asked why the bar slowed down after 7 p.m. “The food just isn’t for having cocktails,” they told him. It wasn’t an indictment of the food. It was a recognition that context matters.

Atlanta closed. The Hilton Head Island is now closed permanently as well.  These are hard decisions.

What happens next is actually two stories running in parallel — and that duality is right there in the name of this piece.

The first story is Zunzibar’s reinvention as a genuine seafood and surf bar concept, launching in Florida markets that have no preconceived notion of what Zunzi’s is “supposed to be.” Jupiter, then the Villages, then Jacksonville — each location will feature a raw oyster bar, an expanded bar program, real plates and silverware, entrees in the $35 range, and potentially seafood towers. It is, a significant departure from what people associate with the brand. But in markets where the slate is clean, that’s not a liability. It’s an opportunity. The new executive chef has opened 28 unique properties across the country. The team that’s been assembled — chief development officer, chief operating officer, brand and innovation officer, marketing — is built to scale something real.

The second story is quieter, and it might be the one that matters most to the people reading this in Savannah.

Zunzi’s wants to open a small sandwich shop. No frills. Back to basics. The original Zunzi’s concept, hole-in-the-wall and proud of it, somewhere in the city that made it famous. “We want to open a Zunzi’s, dive hole in the wall sandwich shop like we’ve always had in Savannah,” he says. “We’re looking for a location to go back to our roots there.”

He compared the two brands to Trailer Park Pizza Party versus Trailer Park — related, but distinct. Different demographics, different experiences, different purposes. Zunzibar for the cocktail crowd, the tourists, the new markets, the growth. Zunzi’s for Savannah. For the people who remember the line down the sidewalk.

There’s something fitting about all of this. Savannah is a city that holds onto its past with considerable force, and Zunzi’s tapped into something deep in the local identity — the idea that great food doesn’t need to dress up or explain itself. That you can yell someone’s name across a tiny room and call it hospitality. That the best sandwich you’ve ever had shouldn’t cost you more than the cash in your wallet.

The restaurant business in 2026 is brutal. Costs are up, labor is hard, commodity prices are unpredictable, and 38% of restaurants are currently losing money. The version of Zunzi’s that Savannah fell in love with was never built to survive the economics of this era. Something had to evolve.

But what makes this a tale of two restaurants rather than just a cautionary story of overreach that zunzis seems to understand exactly what was lost in the evolution and why it matters. Zunzibar can be whatever the Florida market needs it to be. The franchises can grow into a proper national concept with oyster bars and real silverware and a beverage program that would impress anyone.

Since this interview was recorded, Smith has stepped back from his day-to-day role with Zunzi’s and Zunzibar. According to his LinkedIn profile, his tenure as founder concluded in January 2026. He has made no public statement about his departure, and the reasons behind the transition remain unclear. What is clear is that the brand he spent years building — and arguably saved from extinction — now moves forward without him at the helm, leaving the ambitious Florida expansion and the dream of returning Zunzi’s to its Savannah roots in the hands of the team he assembled.

And somewhere in Savannah, if they find their spot, (it’s been going on for months) there will be a small room with a line out the door and someone yelling your name when your order is ready.

Some things shouldn’t change.  Here’s hoping they don’t.

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