How Plate Lunches Elevated This C-Store’s Foodservice
At Mire’s Grocery in Vatican, Louisiana, the menu is filled with Southern staples and hospitality.
Jun 16, 2026
"A little c-store with big flavor,” is how Amanda Mire, who co-owns Mire’s Grocery with her husband Jimmie, describes her store. The store is small, and it’s located in the unincorporated community of Vatican, Louisiana.
“My husband’s grandparents opened the store in 1979,” she explained. The store was built in front of their house, and eventually her husband’s grandfather opened a small gas station on the side. In 2013, they retired after running the store for 31 years, and passed operations onto the younger generation.
When Amanda and Jimmie took over in 2013, they decided to focus on foodservice. “If we were going to make it, we had to do more with food,” she said. “We couldn’t compete with Dollar General on typical c-store items. Each month I was pulling items off the shelf because they expired.”
When the Mires first added plate lunches, they sold around 14 plates a day, filled with pork sausage and jambalaya, chicken rice with gravy and corn macque choux. Even though they couldn’t afford much advertising, word spread. Today, they sell about 40 plate lunches a day.
“We only had two employees at the time,” Mire said. Today, even with a much larger staff, she says they can barely keep up with the demand some days.
A year after they took over the store, Mire left her full-time job. “I took over everything and hired a couple more hands.” One of those hands was Sue Guilbeau, who became the full-time cook at Mire’s Grocery. “She has the same culture as my husband and me,” said Mire. “She used the same taste in seasonings. She knew what we liked spice-wise.”
On Fridays, Mire’s Grocery does a seafood special, which Mire reports is their most popular plate lunch. “We always have a variety of seafood,” she said, adding, “when we do crawfish or shrimp étouffée as well as meatball and shrimp stews, it goes quickly.” Sometimes they sell out by 11:15 a.m.
Continue reading “Plate Lunches and a Perfect Burger” in the June 2026 issue of NACS Magazine.
Food prepared on-site
