The last couple months have been a real whirlwind, as we are finally achieving the full suite of offerings at El Take It Easy. Between the cocktail program we’ll be rolling out in the next couple weeks, and the latest menu revision which really reflects our culinary focus right now, it feels more like the actual Grand Opening rather than the first anniversary. Either way, we’re very excited to share it with you — June promises to be a very dynamic month.
At the same time, achieving a critical mass at El Take It Easy raises questions about the future of the Linkery, questions which we’ve spent a lot of time hashing out, without coming up with ready answers. Specifically, if we now have one location (El Take It Easy) in which we can share with you all of our food and beverage interests including spirits, what’s the meaning of the original mothership, the Linkery?
On one hand, the ambience and aesthetics of the Linkery are unique, and it might be that that part of the experience, alone, is enough to make the Linkery stand as its own destination. I do think that, as more and more people discover El Take It Easy, they will also discover The Linkery, and some people will find they prefer the aesthetics and style of the Linkery.
On the other hand, the Linkery is in a really big physical space, and, with the economic decline of the last few years, I don’t believe we’ve really been the best possible use of all that square footage. If we’re able to really do excellent farm-to-table work at El Take It Easy, perhaps we should convert the Linkery space to a different purpose.
The passion that brought me into the business in the first place was urban development — I wanted to help transform our old streetcar neighborhoods along 30th Street back into the lively, pedestrian-based places they were conceived as. Now, I think we in North Park are a bit heavy on the restaurant/entertainment side (which makes me really happy compared to 2004, definitely) and light on offices, workplaces, retail stores, and, most importantly, places that make things. I’d really like to help our neighborhood put our culture of craftsmanship front and center. And a great place for us to start is, naturally, beer.
Specifically, I’ve recently become semi-obsessed with the idea of the Linkery transforming into a brewpub. “Brewpub” isn’t really the word, I should say either a brewery with an excellent restaurant or an excellent restaurant that brews its own beer. I picture the space on the corner of 30th Street and North Park Way, with the open-air vibe and the beautiful city landscape, as a brewery/restaurant and it makes me think the neighborhood would be even more awesome than it already is.
Brewing isn’t my passion or the passion of our team. So we’re not going to go out and buy a bunch of tanks and start serving Linkery Lager. Instead, if this were to happen, we would need to find the right people to work with. Who could do what needs to be done, including swinging the not-insubstantial costs of equipping a brewery, and possibly even of drastically changing the restaurant.
So that’s where we’re at. We are kind of taking a wait-and-see approach, because the goings-on at El Take It Easy are taking on a life of their own, and we’re not sure how big the positive-energy snowball will get, and we don’t want to interfere with it. It may be that making no change at all is the best action; we’ll see.
At the same time, I have a quiet-but-persistent emotional belief that the best thing to do is to somehow morph the Linkery into a brewery/restaurant, even though that is well outside the realm of my expertise.
I’m writing about this idea here for two reasons. One is, since we started our campaign of “radical transparency” in 2005, we’ve blogged a lot about our business decisions and I’ve never regretted sharing my/our thinking with you. There’s a cult of secrecy in business that I sometimes get drawn into, but nonetheless I find no value in it. We’ve been discussing various possibilities internally for a couple weeks now, so there are some people who know, and people talk, etc. I’d rather just lay it out there.
Another reason is, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a person or company out there who would be perfect to transform what we’re doing at the Linkery into a restaurant/brewery combo — and maybe this blog post will help us connect with those people. So, if you or someone you know has the interest and capability to take on such a project, I’d welcome an email from you/them.
No matter what direction, if any new one, we go with it, the space’s energy is so marvelous, one way or another it will be a big part of the neighborhood for a long time to come. Thanks for creating it with us!