Mural Cormie Jr. plans to continue family tradition with the opening of Mural’s Kitchen at 2635 Country Club Road. A very affordable breakfast menu is available and service starts early – at 6 a.m., Monday through Saturday. Plate lunches, soups, gumbo, bisque, salads, sandwiches – including barbecue brisket –  burgers, po-boys, baked potatoes and bread pudding are some of the lunch and dinner menu items. Doors close at 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday.

On the retail side, Mural’s Kitchen offers Angus beef carved into steaks, ground into chili meat or pressed into patties. Rack of lamb is also available. Chicken salad, potato salad, etouffee, gumbo, soup, sides, desserts and other items are in stock.

“Yes, we have chicken salad on the menu and in containers in the cooler,” he told a customer who was familiar with some of Cormie’s mother’s recipes.

“We have brisket now, brisket sandwiches, pulled brisket nachos and a brisket baked potato,” he told another customer who didn’t know if Mural’s Kitchen was going to offer more than just barbecue. The last owner sold only barbecue. “Soon we’ll add pulled pork barbecue sandwiches, but I don’t think I can do the same pricing as I did back in the day at the store, three for $1,” he said with a chuckle.

His parents are Mural Ray and Camille Calloura Cormie (Oct. 1931-June 2022). They owned and operated stores under the Cormie name between 1953 and 1991 where all their children worked along with them, according to Camille Cormie’s obituary.

Cherished family recipes are not the only family tradition Cormie plans to continue. He said opening Mural’s Kitchen is, in part, due to the work ethic, business sense and entrepreneurial spirit instilled into him by grandparents and parents … and then there is the matter of divine providence.

“My mom worked to put my dad through school, then he worked to put her through school. There were five of us, four boys and one girl, and they always had two jobs for as long as I can remember,”

Cormie’s grandparents, Sam and Katherine Colloura owned land throughout the area, including at the corner of Country Club and Big Lake Road, a location Colloura predicted would one day become part of Lake Charles. At the time, Big Lake was gravel, and instead of a drawbridge over Black Bayou, there was a ferry crossing. Many folks still refer to the location as Cormie’s Grocery. However, it  is now a Brookshire Brothers Express.

“My grandfather had a house down here and I could walk all the way to the Intracoastal Canal, and there wasn’t anything here,” Cormie said. “He always said, if you ever want to make it in this world, invest in property or put your money back into your business.”

Cormie never forgot it. He started learning the ins and outs of the store trade at the age of 10 in his grandfather’s Goosport store.

“My uncle lived in the back and he’d go back there to watch a football game and I’d work the cash register, one of those hand-crank types, standing on a crate,” Cormie said.

The store closed. Cormie’s father reopened it again after he lost his job at the Sheriff’s Office.

“He went around in that neighborhood and would collect stuff on the road that people would throw away, furniture, clothing. He would refurbish it and sell it. I was 15 and working for George Theriot’s because I wanted a car.”

Youngsters who frequented the Goosport store asked Cormie’s father to add cold drinks and chips. He did. It sold. Then they asked for milk, a few groceries, and meat.

“I went to high school, did my work schedule, then I would go and I’d put his groceries out,” Cormie said.

That’s when his father taught him how to cut meat.

“We didn’t have an automatic saw; we had that old butcher block and a hand saw. I was a 90-pound weakling and he made me pick up those 150 lb hindquarters and put them on that block and break it up,” Cormie said.

After graduating from high school Cormie joined the Navy. He helped his father tear down the old store at the corner of Country Club and Big Lake during a leave. Looking forward to getting out of the service and coming home to buy his dream car, a Camaro, he returned home to go to school and work for his parents. After eight years or so, they offered Cormie the store. He didn’t want it.

“I told dad to sell it because I could go to work anywhere,” Cormie said. “I regret that decision.”

In 1986, the Cormie’s owner-financed a franchise, and it didn’t work out. Mural Cormie, Jr. purchased the store from his father in 1992, leased it to his son in 2008. It burned in 2009. He rebuilt it. It was leased then sold.

He still owns the Cormie car and pet wash near the store, and he never saw himself operating a business like Cormie’s again, one of the first convenience stores ever to have a deli, one of the first-ever smaller footprint “neighborhood grocers.”

But a believer in messages from God, he received one after passing what is now Mural’s Kitchen. “I saw the real estate sign and passed it for months,” he said, acknowledging that thoughts of opening a business did cross his mind.

“I passed one Saturday morning, and it was like someone just hit me with a brick and said, ‘If you’re going to buy it, you’ve got to buy it today.” He called the real estate company, put an offer on it, and it was accepted.

“Now I was stuck,” he said. “So, that’s how I got it. It was meant to be and I believe you’re supposed to let God direct you. I don’t believe in giving up. All I can say is, when it’s time to give up, it’s time to give up. Now’s not the time, and I don’t want this story to be about me. I want it to be about them, my family, honoring them and giving God the glory.”