CAYCE — Henry's of Cayce, a laidback sports bar and burger restaurant in Lexington County, will close after seven years in business. The restaurant has three locations in the Columbia area.
The restaurant, located at 2108 State St. in Cayce, announced the impending closure through a Facebook post Jan. 7. It joins a handful of other local restaurants to close its doors because of the rising cost of doing business in the state — namely, the increasingly high cost of liquor liability insurance where policies have risen tens of thousands of dollars in recent years.
"Due to the increased (Liquor) Liability Insurance we cannot continue to operate," the post read.
The bar's owners said while the restaurant's official closing date isn't set in stone yet, they expect to be done operating by the end of January. There are two other locations, on Devine Street and on Sparkleberry Crossing Road in northeast Columbia.
Its closure adds to the growing list of well-loved local businesses that have closed their doors in recent months. River Rat, one of the city's first brewpubs, shut down at the end of December after a decade in business. Village Idiot, a popular pizza place with three locations, shut down its Forest Acres location, which has been open since 2009, in late December. And New Brookland Tavern, which operated at 122 State St. for three decades, moved to Columbia's Five Points at the beginning of this year after its longtime building was sold.
The closures are a result of a slew of issues for small businesses — some spurred by landlord and leasing changes, like in the case of Village Idiot and New Brookland Tavern, while others have cited the rising cost of doing business, including higher costs of liquor liability insurance.
Restaurants and bars that serves alcohol in the evening are required to have a minimum $1 million liquor liability policy, making it less profitable for insurance providers. Over the last few years, insurance providers have stopped offering the policy for restaurants in South Carolina, and the ones that do offer it have started charging more and more.
Bar owners have seen their prices rise from around $20,000 in 2020 to $60,000 and up in 2023, according to SC Venue Crisis, a grassroots organization lobbying lawmakers in the state to make changes to the rules. The group plans to hold a tort reform rally at the S.C. Statehouse Jan. 9. As lawmakers return to the state capitol this month, some have already called for changes.
State Sen. Luke Rankin, R-Myrtle Beach, said Dec. 7 he plans to file a bill creating a committee to investigate causes of rapidly rising insurance prices in sectors across the state and possible solutions, the Post and Courier previously reported.
“Insurance rates have been rising at an alarming rate particularly for more and more property owners along the coast and for some businesses,” he said in a December media release.
