“Since Aramark took over the food service over on campus, they pretty much locked up the people on campus,” he said. “They shortened the lunch break so the kids don’t have a chance to leave and opened all those new cafeterias and put those franchises on campus. Lunch is the biggest thing where we’ve lost our business — we probably do $20,000 less a month in lunch than we were doing three years ago.”

Yolanda Leslee, a waitress at Pepper’s, moved to Chapel Hill from New Jersey two months ago after losing her home in Hurricane Sandy. She said she was grateful to find a job at Pepper’s soon after.

“When I went looking for a job up and down Franklin Street, this is the last place I came in,” she said. “I was like, ‘It would be just too good to be true to get a job at Pepper’s.’ And I came in and they hired me, and then a month later …”

Leslee and Harvey both said they were concerned about finding jobs after the closure.

“I’ve never worked for anybody in life — I’ve been doing this for 26 years,” Harvey said.

“I’m going to be looking for a job at age 60.”

Contact the desk editor at city@dailytarheel.com.