Driving north on Wilmington Street toward the downtown Raleigh skyline punctuated by Red Hat’s crimson banner and the PNC tower, if you look left after ducking under the I-40 overpass, you’ll see a small lot populated by concrete trucks and piles of stone and dirt. Behind that, a massive arched tent rests atop a small hill.
The area was dubbed an “industrial wasteland,” by Raleigh mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin, but to Chip Haskell, it’s home to the business he’s invested everything in.
Haskell and his business partner, Robert Boyd Andrews, have leased the tract of land at 201 Walker Street since 2016 for their grease processing facility, Grease Outlet. Essentially, they take the wastewater from restaurants and other businesses filled with food waste and brown grease and filter it so it can be more easily processed by the city’s water system. Last year, they processed about 5,500 tons of grease and food waste. The leftover materials are converted into compost.