Restaurant news roundup

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We go over the latest restaurant news on this week's Access Louisville podcast.

To start out we chat about the sale of the former Silver Dollar building. The famous bourbon bar, which closed last year, had been housed in the Albert A. Stoll Firehouse at 1761 Frankfort Ave. Attorney Vanessa Cantley owns the building but is looking to step back from property management and focus on other pursuits, as Reporter Michael L. Jones explains on the show. 

We also talk about a new executive chef at Hotel Bourré Bonne. Jason McCollum, the former Chik’n & Mi chef and co-owner, is now in charge of the Downtown hotel’s culinary program. 

After that, we chat about a major acquisition deal for Louisville-grown breakfast franchise Biscuit Belly, a magic shop in Old Louisville that has a bar attached and a fast food bankruptcy. Jones also gives us his impressions of the new Cuban Itallian restaurant Prado 264, which recently opened in the Highlands. 

Access Louisville, sponsored by Baird, is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. You can also follow it on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

A classic restaurant news update is on the way. That's next on Access Louisville. Thanks for joining us. My name is David Mann, and joining me today are Zach Owens.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

How's it going?

SPEAKER_02 0:23

And Michael L. Jones.

SPEAKER_03 0:24

How are you doing out there?

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Access Louisville is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. Each week we bring you the latest news and plenty of sharp opinions on what's going on here in Louisville, Kentucky. A few things before we get into it. First, this podcast is sponsored by Baird. Discover the difference Baird can make in your financial life at rwbaird.com/slash Louisville. We'll hear more from Baird later in the show. Also, our next live podcast is set for July 30th. I'm calling this one How Louisville Lives. We're going to talk about the ins and outs of the residential real estate market with three local experts. Of course, the housing market is one of those things we're always talking about on the show. So I hope you can make it out and get some real insight into where this market is going next. I'll leave a link in the notes of this show where you can buy tickets. Today, though, it's been a while since we've done a restaurant news update. And Michael, we got quite a backlog of stuff to get through here.

SPEAKER_03 1:25

Yeah, they keep opening and closing.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

They do. And celebrating anniversaries, which we'll get to that later. But um this one I thought we'd start off with uh an iconic Louisville bar space is for sale. Um, and uh that's the old silver dollar. And you just talked to the owner of that building. Um kind of what was she thinking she was gonna do with that person?

SPEAKER_03 1:48

Okay, yeah, I talked to Vanessa Cantley, who um she's an attorney, but she and her husband Sean were among the founders of the Silver Dollar, and they sold it uh, I think it was in 20 uh 20 um 24, and it closed the next the following year. Yeah. And but she maintained the ownership of the building, and uh basically she's about to be an empty nester, and she thought, you know, do I want to be a landlord? Yeah. And so uh she's decided that she wants to sell it, but she's doing it off market. There hasn't been a listing. She posted something on Facebook, which I saw, and uh some other people have seen, and so she's done tours and stuff. She's gotten a lot of interest uh in the building. Used to be a firehouse, and her great-grandfather retired from that firehouse, yeah, which is why she was interested in it. And I think uh uh some other relatives of hers lived across the street before that was a big commercial corridor. Yeah. So she's like, you know, I'm not in a hurry to get rid of if the building is uh paid off. Uh but she would uh, you know, she's running a nonprofit and uh she's got other things, yeah, and she didn't want to go through another like rehab and having uh to deal with a tenant if she didn't have to.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Yeah, she kind of sounded like she was looking at the next chapter of her life and it's like, do I want this this uh building in it? Yeah, and decided that she didn't. Uh so yeah, interesting. I see I said it was a uh an iconic bar space, but it's an iconic space in general because like you said, it used to be a fire firehouse before that, and it kind of looks like a firehouse too. So um definitely uh the silver dollar was a uh it got a lot of accolades back during its run, which was lasted more than 10 years.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

So I think it was really ahead of its time too. I think it was one of the first like bourbon-centric bars to really capitalize on the uh bourbon boom here.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Nowadays, like all these bars have you know great bourbon selection, but that was really one of the first out of the gate that uh that had that great selection and got a lot of press because of that. So um Zach, you just had a story about the uh the guy who founded Chicken Me, um, which has closed. Uh he's landed somewhere new. So if you miss Chicken Me's food, where can you go?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Uh well you could go down to uh Steakhouse Bourbon at Hotel Bourbon. Uh Jason McCollum, as you said, founder of Chicken and Me with his wife, uh was hired to uh oversee the hotel's culinary program. Uh he's gonna be overseeing uh Steakhouse Bourbon, that's the hotel's ground floor restaurant, and rooftop Bourbon, that's its indoor-outdoor lounge. Uh I know a lot of people were disappointed, myself included, when Chicken Me closed in February, but uh you know, uh according to uh spokespeople for the hotel, they say uh McCollum's new menu is gonna have stuff like uh chicken fried sweetbreads, which sound interesting, uh and stuff like lamb tartar. So it's a sounds like it's a bit above the level that he was doing at Chicken Me, but it sounds really good.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Yeah, chicken me was a real uh like approachable kind of like daily kind of spot, whereas this is a steakhouse, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

It's a little spicy fried chicken and ramen. Yeah. So yeah, well, McCollum goes down to Hotel Bourbon. David, uh, you had a big development, this story, a big breaker about uh Biscuit Belly this week. They just made a big deal.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Speaking of delicious places, uh Biscuit Belly just uh tripled its footprint with the acquisition of another uh biscuit-centric concept called Maple Street Biscuit Company. You might remember they had a location in the Highlands at one point uh that didn't work. Uh well that place was owned by Cracker Barrel and the uh the Coulters, the the couple that owns Biscuit Belly, um, I guess saw this opportunity available where Cracker Barrel was trying to divest this thing, and so they picked up 34 locations of Biscuit or of Maple Street Biscuit Company, which are going to become biscuit belly locations. Um, and those are in multiple states. Uh that'll take place over the next couple of years. But uh the ones I think it was in Richmond, Virginia, and um uh Cincinnati, they're immediately changing to Biscuit Belly locations. So yeah, big, big move for them.

SPEAKER_03 6:42

Yeah, I've been covering their expansion throughout the Midwest and the South. Uh it's a really good story for like a local something that started locally. Yeah, it really is. And uh, you know, it's uh it's a thrill when you're driving out of town and you see a biscuit belly or some other uh uh concept that's starting in Louisville, you know.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Yeah. And they're going from 15 locations to what will be 60 by the end of 2028. So it's pretty pretty big. That the the cultures also, if you remember Lou Vino, they founded that. I think they since sold it, right, Michael? Yeah, yeah um, and uh and so they've been in the restaurant game for uh a good while, good 10 years or something like that, maybe more than that, but um but yeah, so yeah, big big uh big deal to come through the wire this week.

SPEAKER_03 7:36

So yeah, breakfast and brunch uh restaurants seem to um do well despite you know the economy.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Yeah, I wonder if they have better margins than something. I guess you don't serve as much alcohol, but um maybe the the entrees are cheaper to buy.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

So yeah, uh now the eggs are down.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Yeah, now that eggs are down. Um, all right. Well, I wanted to ask you about I love this story you wrote, Michael. You wrote about a couple opening a magic shop in Old Louisville, and it was a quote from the guy who said, But from the time I was five to the time I'm 42, which is how old he was, he's not not a day has gone by where he didn't do something with magic. So but this has a restaurant element too, right?

SPEAKER_03 8:21

Yeah, coffee shop. Well, uh, yeah, they um so I talked to uh Joseph and Yanni Thomas, and they own Nevermore, which is a magic venue in uh O Louisville, and they opened a bar uh called Elixir Bar uh that is on Oak Street next to where the new Pizza King is. And this is just I I'd heard people talk about there being a bar. They don't have a sign or anything yet. And I just happened to be walking, my wife and I were walking down the street, and we saw this bar and went in for a drink, and uh Yanni happened to be bartending, and so that's kind of how we got the story. And so uh Joseph, his grandmother had a house in Old Louisville, and when he was five, he discovered a magic kit there, became a magician, like a really good magician, went and moved to LA, became part of this uh magic castle, I think it is, like just this group of elite musician magicians that uh do shows and stuff with this. And so uh he wanted to do his own version of that, and um but you know, uh somewhere else. And he remembered that Louisville has the uh a big collection of Victorian homes, so they moved her, and so they have actually three businesses because he also teaches jujitsu. Yeah. So they have a jiu-jitsu academy, the magic venue, and then they opened an Elixir bar, which is also a coffee house during the day. Yeah. And uh they were they were a very funny couple, uh, very interesting, and um they refer to Elixir Bar as like the witchy uh uh cousin of Nevermore. And after I left there, there's a uh a restaurant two doors down called Southern Comfort. It's kind of like a cafeteria style thing. I stopped in there and uh I go there often, so I know the owner, and I was telling her I was just there, and she's like, Is that what that is? Is a bar? Every time I see it, they got something about witches.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

What a fascinating, like just career this guy has put together of like you know, the bar and the magic and all that. Uh, you know, it's just really cool.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

My uh wife is a huge magic fan. Oh, really? For some reason, yeah. So I've actually been to the Nevermore three times. Wow, that's awesome. Performances, and it's this slightly creepy and very beautiful old Louisville mansion. Yeah, and uh the performances are very intimate. I don't think they sell more than 20 seats for him. And apparently the big timers on the magic circuit all stop in there, so yeah, it's a cool experience.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

Everybody, uh most of the people they get are on like America's Got Talent and all these things because he has all these connections in LA. Yeah. So if one of his friends is like gonna be in Nashville or Chicago, he's like, stop in Louisville.

SPEAKER_02 11:41

That's awesome. I just love that we have this, like who knew we had this like cultural thing. So um, did he do a magic trip trick to uh impress you during the interview or anything?

SPEAKER_03 11:51

Uh no, no, they did invite me to to go to a show, right? Um they do make a good old fashioned, I will say that.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

That's all the magic you need.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Maybe you'll get to see him uh bend a spoon with his mind.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

All right, let's see here. So you had another story here, Michael. This one just came out, um, or has it come out yet? I don't exactly know, but uh a uh fast food franchisee. Uh you wrote a story about today that has filed for bankruptcy. What's going on there?

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Okay, so uh Superior Star LLC is a Phoenix-based uh Hardy's franchisee. They have 14 locations in uh Kentucky, and uh including, I think they had uh they closed three in Louisville. They might have two left here, but uh they declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week. And uh part of the problem is that they bought 103 restaurants from another franchisee, and they said that they didn't realize how badly uh in need of repairs there was, and there were back taxes, and there were a lot of things that dragged on their own bottom line. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Gotta do that due diligence, you know.

SPEAKER_03 13:16

Yeah, so they had they said that they had $80 million in gross revenue in uh 2025, and they still, you know, that wasn't enough for them uh to keep going. So uh they have uh I think 56 locations now, and that's after closing about 30, yeah, including the ones in Louisville that we talked about.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Yeah, in chapter 11, that's the one where you can uh restructure and hopefully come out of that, keep the business running, and that sort of thing. So it does bring me up a great question, though, about Hardys. Is it the best legacy fast food franchise, or is there something else that's the best legacy fast food franchise talking about?

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Taco Bell is the king. You think Taco Bell? Yeah, I don't know. That whole spora thing, whatever. I'll eat through it.

SPEAKER_03 14:09

You know, my my wife is a big Hardy's breakfast person, but I can't remember the last time I was at Hardy's. Yeah, me neither. Uh we had the story about the Hardeys in Jeffersonville being sold. And I think that that is the last Hardeys I ever went to regularly. You know, early in my career, I worked at the Jeffersonville Evening News. Yes. So, like, that's probably 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Yeah, it was probably longer than that because I bet I worked at the Jeffersonville Evening News 20 years ago. But um, but yeah, that's the last Hardys I remember going to too, because I um I worked there at uh it was called News and Tribune. They that that merger took place while I was there. Um, but uh yeah, they had the one in downtown Jeff. It was pretty popular. There wasn't a ton of restaurants in downtown Jeff or fast food restaurants in downtown Jeff. So I went there a lot. Um I would put in a vote for if we're gonna call it I I would say is steak and shake. Do you think that counts as a legacy fast food restaurant? Yeah, but they're like weird now. Yeah, they're weird now. And like they always had that like sit-down thing too, and they had like milkshakes and stuff. So that's maybe not even fast food. Um, so maybe Wendy's. I'll put in a vote for Wendy's. That's that's a good legacy.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Wendy's is a strong vote.

SPEAKER_03 15:30

Um But I think fast food in general is having problems because they've had to raise prices so much, and then it's not fast anymore, and it's not cheap. Yeah, that's true. And so a lot of the times if I have a choice, like if I'm gonna get a hamburger, it's just as uh cheap to go to Toasties as it is to go to a McDonald's.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

Yeah, get something a little more uh upscale, and plus like you know, convenience fast food used to have the convenience of you just gotta hit the drive-thru and then you're out. But now with online ordering, like so many more places have that level of convenience where maybe they don't have a drive-thru, but you can order it, run in, get it real quick, and come out. You know, that's that's still convenient for a lot of people. So I think a lot of people end up that's raise the comp competition in that sector because you know you got your your Kedobas and Chipotle's and all those places that that do that. So um all right. So I mentioned a 20th anniversary party earlier. Michael, you went to Jeff Ruby's 20th anniversary party, and uh Mr. Ruby told you an interesting story. I guess this was a risky venture for uh Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:50

So I went to their 20th anniversary. Um, they had a cocktail party, and um so uh I sat down with Jeff Ruby and his daughter Brittany, who's the CEO of the company now, and uh he was telling me that um, you know, when he started he started in Cincinnati and he stayed there because his kids were young and um he uh waited to grow the business until they could get older, maybe wanted to put them to work because they all work for him now. Uh but um so uh someone from the Gold House came to him and uh wanted him to come to Louisville for a meeting, and he was like, he figured it's not gonna work out, so I'm not gonna go. So the executives went to Cincinnati and ate at one of his restaurants, and they said it was the best thing that they had. So he was like, now we could talk. And he said that they made him an offer he couldn't refuse, and so he came here, but it was it was a risk for him because this was the first restaurant outside of Cincinnati, and uh it was the first restaurant in the South. You know, we're on the edge of the South.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

I thought it was funny you thought we were the South. Yeah. Okay, we're like an hour and a half from where you're based, but okay.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

So he actually moved here for a year. Yeah. And uh to learn, you know, meet people and to learn the the kind of taste and uh cuisine. And so he added things like uh shrimp and grits to the menu. Uh they had a chicken that used L8 as uh and then he had to create the dessert that looked like a maker's mark bottle and things that had to localize it. And so he's like it paid off um, you know, better than I even thought because 20 years later we're still here. Yeah. And they they recently did a renovation of the place and stuff, and now they're in Nashville, they're you know, they're all over now. Now they're in the south. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're actually in the south. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

I don't know. Yeah, that's uh I it's funny. I guess the way people see uh, you know, in Cincinnati, maybe they think we're we're southern, but I think around here we don't think of ourselves as totally southern. Maybe Kentucky.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

Yeah, like, you know, do you guys live on farms? And I'm like, we're five hours away. You know.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

I've talked to people from like the northeast before, and I'll tell them I'm from Kentucky, and they'll go, oh, the deep south. I'm like, well, it's not that deep, you know. I mean, there's four states below us, but but uh, you know, it's the south, I guess, maybe on the line. So uh anyway, I guess uh perception's everything. So all right. Well, uh one more restaurant story here. Michael, you got to check out Prado 264. That's a new place that just moved into uh the was it Marks Feed Store.

SPEAKER_03 20:01

Yeah, Mark's feed store in the Highlands, and it's a couple from Miami. Um it opened in the uh early July, I think July 15th was the first day. And I had a really good time there. I went there during the friends and family uh night weekend. Um it they truly it's a Cuban and Italian uh fusion, and which sounds weird, but uh it's named after a hotel or a restaurant in Havana that uh actually was started by some Italian immigrants, and so you get uh like they had these uh croquettes that have risotto in them, but you'll also like get um some shrimp, like there there were three different ones and stuff, so they mixed like the Cuban uh uh meats, like some steak with the risotto and the cheeses and stuff. And um my wife had a chicken dish that's their specialty, so it is kind of strange because you the menus are iPads, yeah. And so that takes some maneuvering to to get through.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

Um but you don't order it on the iPads, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

No, no, you have a you you it's just to look through everything. So a little bit gimmicky there, but uh I had a good time, and on the weekends they're gonna have music. Okay, cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Well, yeah, they got a um, there's a lot of great Cuban places around town. So um this is Cuban Italian, so it's a little different twist on that.

SPEAKER_03 21:44

Yeah, the uh their uh unique thing is the Cuban pizza, which I haven't had yet. Yeah, but uh the owner uh told me that uh you'll find it in every like Cuban community.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

I'm I'm curious. I want to know. About a Cuban pizza. So, all right. Well, that is it for the restaurant news. I tell you what, we'll take a break here, we'll get a word from our sponsors, and then we'll come back and we'll give you something to think about.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

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SPEAKER_02 22:45

Well, uh, we've been wrapping up the show with one last little takeaway from each of us, and that's what we'll do right now. Um I call it give us something to think about. So, Zach, why don't you start us off? Give us something to think about.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

So it seems like our uh long summer nightmare is almost over. Yeah. I-65 will reopen in uh on July 31st, so they say. Yeah. And I believe they will.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

Well, they said it was maybe early. They happened.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

So it sounds like they've been well ahead of schedule. So I'm excited for that. Uh surprisingly, though, my commute hasn't really been affected. I'm coming from the Germantown Ottoman Park area every day, and I thought it was just gonna take me an hour to get in. But uh they've done a really nice job with uh the traffic.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

So mine hasn't been bad either. Um, I thought maybe it would be because all that traffic gets diverted to 264, but it you know, maybe slows down a little bit. Nothing, nothing too bad. So uh Michael, how about you give us something to think about?

SPEAKER_03 23:50

Well, uh school is about to start, and that's when traffic will get really bad. So I'm glad that the expressway is opening up, but there's also a new state law uh involving school buses and when you have to stop. Uh before, like, you know, you had to stop if the if you were going the same direction. Now you have to stop in both directions unless there's a barrier. Uh so and I think they're gonna be installing cameras and stuff. Oh man. So uh you don't want to get a ticket for that. I have a friend who that happened to she accidentally uh passed a stop sign and she ended up having to pay a big fine.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Well, uh, you know, I could totally see this law like catching some people because a lot of people are just rude and impatient behind the wheels. So I could totally see this not working out very well at all, especially in Louisville.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Lucky for them, uh LMPD really doesn't enforce traffic all that often.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

It does not seem that they do.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

Yeah, it's important to me because there's a school bus stop on my block. So when I'm coming home, like right before I can park, uh, usually I get caught by this bus. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

Um, I will talk about data centers because everybody likes talking about data centers. I'm gonna be that guy. Uh, there was another data center announced yesterday. This one was going into Carrollton, Kentucky. Um, and it's being developed by a team of developers that includes the Poe Companies, which is a Louisville company, and they are also developing one in Southwest Louisville.

SPEAKER_03 25:35

Campground Road.

SPEAKER_02 25:35

Yeah, and Campground Road. Um, and uh that has been the subject of some protest. I saw the mayor's press conference got interrupted a few weeks ago because of uh from protesters who wanted the mayor to intervene in that uh data center. Uh I don't know. I can't tell you whether or not I my big question for these is on these data centers is like, what is the economic benefit to us if we don't protest the data center? Um, you know, or if we if we allow the data center or encourage the data center. Like Stacy Griggs, uh local tech CEO, had a column and he made the point about uh the tax benefit because these are going to provide a lot of property taxes. And it's like, okay, yeah, I could see that, but would it provide any more property taxes than say a distribution facility or something like that? Like, I think what regardless of where you stand, the people building the data centers need to do a better job communicating like why this data center needs to be here versus somewhere else. I think that's you know, if you can make that case, I think people will listen to you. But for right now, it's like, well, they don't really have many jobs. There are some construction jobs. There is the taxes, but I mean, if you develop the land, there's going to be taxes uh attached to it. So could couldn't you theoretically develop something else there? Do they do data centers pay more in taxes? Can we make it so they pay more in taxes? Like that's kind of the uh that's kind of what needs to get figured out, I guess. So uh it's interesting uh to watch this uh this drama play out, you know, and especially in our business, just kind of noticing how the environment around data centers has changed. Because when Meta announced theirs and Jeff, everybody was like, Whoa, Meta? Oh yeah, I know them from Facebook.

SPEAKER_03 27:31

Um we're we're attractive to data centers because we have so much excess water. Oh, yeah, and they need water for cooling.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

Yeah, that's totally true. So, like, does that, you know, can we charge can we just charge a higher price on the water that we sell to data centers? Like, what's the opportunity for us there? Um, so you know, I think that's some of the things that people regulating this stuff need to be asking. So anyway, uh that is my something to think about there. Um and if you like what you hear, please consider subscribing to this podcast on uh any of the popular podcast services, Apple Podcasts or Spotify are a couple of the popular ones. Thank you very much, Zach, and thank you, Michael. Thank you, Baird, for the support, and of course, you guys out there listening to us, and we'll see you next time. Bye.