Prater to lead culinary operations at Kitchen Sync
January 9, 2025
On the heels of announcing expansion plans, longtime locally-owned restaurant favorite, Kitchen Sync, has hired a new company chef. Ted Prater, a highly accomplished industry veteran, will head up Kitchen Sync’s culinary operations and help guide its growth plans.
“We couldn’t be more excited that Ted has joined our Kitchen Sync family,” says Co-owner and Managing Partner Kevin Feeny. “Ted wasted no time jumping in to work with our team. He is a highly skilled chef who fully embraces the vision and high-level company values we aspire to at Kitchen Sync.”
Located at 1609 Laurens Road in Greenville, Kitchen Sync opened in 2016 with a unique blended value business model focusing on people, planet and profit. It will soon open a second location at 2420 Hudson Road in the Brushy Creek Crossing shopping center in the space formerly occupied by Dragon Den.
Feeny plans to carry forward the responsible business model into the new location while enhancing and broadening the company’s focus on stewardship. With a renewed concentration on the “people” element of the blended value business model, Feeny says Prater is the perfect fit to enhance its commitment to the personal and professional development of the staff at the restaurant.
“Our goal is to transition from a really good restaurant into a great company,” says Feeny. “To do that we need to continue to recruit, hire and retain great people in an increasingly competitive and volatile industry environment. Ted is a fabulous mentor and has a long history of successfully helping employees become their best selves.”
A southern boy at heart, Prater’s culinary experience spans the spectrum from fine dining to dive bars, mostly in Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Texas and now in South Carolina. He took his first kitchen job at 14, landed his first executive chef job at the age of 21, and has also plied his craft in catering, events, hotel food service, as a private chef, and culinary education and training.
Prior to arriving in South Carolina, Prater spent 12 years managing back-of-house operations at Bangers Sausage House & Beer Garden, a fixture in Austin, Texas renowned for its unique live-fire cooking and scratch-made Southern fare. There, Prater spent years studying management styles and mastering the art of nurturing a positive back-of-house culture as a springboard to helping team members elevate their professional career goals.
He brought his learnings with him to South Carolina where he most recently served as a program coordinator and adjunct culinary instructor at the Truist Culinary and Hospitality Innovation Center in Greenville.
“Somebody with Ted’s culinary and industry chops and his knowledge of, and passion for, the business can choose to work wherever they want,” Feeny admits. “Ted is now part of our family, and we couldn’t be more grateful or excited to have him on this journey with us.”
Restaurant Week
Kitchen Sync will once again participate in Restaurant Week from January 9-18 during normal restaurant hours. Visit kitchensyncgreenville.com for its Restaurant Week offerings, some of which will be new creations developed by Prater.
Now Hiring
As Kitchen Sync prepares for an early 2025 opening of its second location, they are ready to hire key back-of-house management positions. Available positions may be found on the website at kitchensyncgreenville.com/jobs. Serious job inquiries may be emailed to [email protected].
About Kitchen Sync
Established in 2016 in Greenville, SC, at 1609 Laurens Road, Kitchen Sync is a locally owned, soulful neighborhood restaurant offering farm-fresh, scratch-made fare served with extraordinary hospitality. The ‘sync’ comes from a business climate and culture with the values of community responsibility, ecological integrity, and compassion ‘baked’ into the company DNA. Evidence is realized in a work culture that respects and nurtures individuality and authenticity; support of local social enterprises such as Soteria CDC and Jasmine Kitchen; and being ranked the nation’s #1 Independently Owned Green Certified Restaurant since 2016. For more information, visit kitchensyncgreenville.com.
