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CHEF KEVIN GILLESPIE’S RED BEARD RESTAURANTS JOINS FORCES WITH
MERIWETHER COMPANIES TO FORM REDWETHER COLLABORATIVE
Two Innovative Companies Partner to
Produce Micro-Restaurant Environments
Beginning in Kansas City, Missouri, and
Nashville, Tennessee
ATLANTA (June 12,
2017) – RedWether Collaborative, created through a partnership between Atlanta chef
Kevin Gillespie’s Red Beard
Restaurants and innovative hospitality developers Meriwether Companies, aims to take the current food hall
trend to the next level. The group has identified sites in Kansas City,
Missouri, and Nashville, Tennessee, for their first locations, with Kansas
City’s Crossroads neighborhood scheduled to open in mid-2018.
In 2013, Gillespie opened Gunshow with the goal of creating the
next generation of restaurants, where there were no longer walls between the
chefs and the guests and providing a fun, interactive experience for both. With
this successful experiment in full swing, he turned his attention to another
long-standing goal: to help other chefs open their own restaurants but in a
less risky way. Through RedWether Collaborative and the contributions of his
partners at Meriwether, Gillespie hopes to create a new type of
multi-restaurant experience where the tenants are chefs specially chosen for
their entrepreneurial desires and capacity for future success.
“I have been wanting to help chefs try a new
concept or open their first restaurant, and I finally have the right partner to
do this,” says Gillespie. “As a restaurateur, I think mostly about food and
service. Meriwether thinks about the setting and the overall experiences. Together,
we envision a curated, micro-restaurant environment where aspiring
entrepreneurs get to take the next step toward their dreams with RedWether as a
support structure behind them. It’s a unique hybrid of restaurant and
incubator.”
Meriwether
partner Garrett Simon says, “Kevin has a way of looking at the
traditional way of doing things and coming up with a better idea. We celebrate innovative thinking and consider him our spiritual leader. We
can fill gaps for each other to create exciting spaces for consumers and our
chef tenants. We looked all over the country and fell in love with Kansas City
and Nashville; they are perfect for our first locations.”
Adds
Gillespie regarding current and future sites, “We see talent and food culture
all over the country, not just in the major cities. That’s why we were drawn to
Kansas City and Nashville initially. There is so much there, and we want to be
a part of the exciting food culture that already exists. The cool thing about
RedWether is that each site will be a homegrown experience filled by locals. It
will be completely different in each city.”
The
RedWether Collaborative partners will choose six to eight concepts for each
location. In addition to the chef and cuisine, they consider the ways the
dishes will complement and contrast with each other to enhance the total
experience for the guests. RedWether controls service and the bars inside the
space, giving the chef tenants the ability to focus on their food without the
burden of a lot of paperwork or the need to access large sums of money.
“We
want to give our chefs a path to the future and groom the
next generation of restaurateurs,” says Gillespie. “Our operating goal is to strengthen
the tenants for the time they are with us. We can all benefit from learning,
and we plan to make this educational for all involved. We want to ensure that a
RedWether concept goes from Point A to Point B while they are with us, leaving
stronger than when they started. We hope to create a culture of mentoring - a
true collaborative.”
For consumers, RedWether’s restaurant properties
will offer an ever-changing environment in which to try new things while
ultimately adding to the city’s restaurant scene. The company’s first location
is slated to open in Kansas City in mid-2018. RedWether has signed a letter of
intent for its second location in Nashville’s Germantown Union mixed-use
development. RedWether is currently considering markets throughout the United
States for future development.
About RedWether Collaborative
With the creation of RedWether Collaborative, Kevin
Gillespie has a new platform to expand his vision of the multi-chef
collaborative concept – one that is food-centric and provides mentorship with a
genuine interest in the restaurant tenants’ success. If something isn’t
working, the Red Beard Restaurants team can apply its combined decades of
restaurant industry experience to correct it, providing a safety net for chefs
so mistakes don’t turn into disasters. Hospitality developer and partner
Meriwether Companies brings its keen eye and real estate savvy to identify the
best possible locations for development. Unlike the traditional restaurant
model that often throws chef-owners to the wolves, RedWether’s model is supportive
and scalable to any city, delivering value to customers, employees and
investors.
About Red Beard Restaurants
Red Beard Restaurants is the
parent company that oversees Atlanta chef, restaurateur, speaker and cookbook
author Kevin Gillespie’s food and beverage ventures, including his restaurants Gunshow and Revival, all
of his merchandise and Red Beard Special
Events, which operates Communion Cantina,
his BBQ pop up Terminus City
and Gamechanger,
opening in August 2017 at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The management company
allows Gillespie to set comprehensive standards to ensure smart expansion,
offer more internal growth opportunities for his team members and provide
consulting services to other food and beverage start-ups. With the 2015
establishment of Red Beard Restaurants, Gillespie is able to continue his
day-to-day interactions with diners while also pursuing his creative visions
and impacting the culinary landscape of the South. The company’s offices are located
in Atlanta. For more information, visit redbeardrestaurants.com.
About
Meriwether Companies
As a multi-disciplined, experiential real estate
development and investment firm focused on designing distinctive and
interesting hospitality and residential projects located in resort communities
and select urban settings, Meriwether is no stranger to tapping a myriad of
partners with the utmost expertise to create handcrafted solutions that make each
of their projects successful. Founded in 2012, the company’s partnership group
consists of over 50 years and $2 billion of collective real estate development
and sales experience. Meriwether’s
unique approach allowed the company to quickly grow into one of the premier
resort development firms in the Western United States. For more information,
visit meriwetherco.com.
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