When longtime Chago’s Cantina owner Chad Head announced that he was stepping away from his restaurant after an 11-and-a-half-year run operating the popular Mexican restaurant, he intimated that he hoped to sell the restaurant while maintaining ownership of the property within his family. It didn’t take long for interest to arise in the opportunity, and three longtime restaurant pros stepped forward to bring Chago’s back to life as Chago's Belmont Cantina.
Brothers Steven and Christopher Smithing run front-of-house and the kitchens, respectively, at Mere Bulles and Green Hills Grille, and Brandon Styll serves as director of operations at both restaurants. Those restaurants have been stalwarts in the local dining scene for years, and the trio took them over from their original ownership, dragging them into the 21st century and prolonging their lives as indispensable neighborhood restaurants.
They have spent the past few months working on the Chago's property at 2015 Belmont Blvd. behind windows covered with butcher paper for secrecy. The main indication that something was happening was the experimental paint color schemes painted on the building's front walls. Hopefully, by June, you’ll be able to see and taste the fruits of their efforts, but in advance of that, I sat down with the trio to discuss the process.
You may also recognize Styll as the co-host (along with Caroline Galzin) of his Nashville Restaurant Radio podcast. In a novel development, Brandon invited me to come on his show and take over the interviewer chair to speak with them about their big news. So if you’d like to peek behind the scenes of what an interview is really like or simply check my transcription skills, you can listen to the entire interview here.
Brandon Styll, Steven Smithing and Christopher Smithing
It has been a quick turnaround since Chago’s late-January closing announcement, but interested parties might have noticed that the restaurant’s Yelp listing noted it as “Temporarily Closed.”
“Google had it as ‘permanently closed,’ which we changed," Steven notes. "We’re planning to get in there and redo Chago’s. We’re going to use the same name. I like Nashville brand names that have a good history, and Chad did a great job building that restaurant. We’re just happy to go in and make some tweaks, some adjustments and probably some menu modifications and system modifications, but other than that, we’re going to ride on his very good coattails!”
When Steven read that the restaurant was closing, he called that day and asked if they were interested in talking.
“It’s an old building and there was a lot of due diligence we had to do transaction-wise," he says. "We showed some interest in each other and stuck with each other through thick and thin. I had an advantage that he and his father owned the property, and at some point you need to find somebody to pay the rent and the property taxes — all the triple-net things that we tenants love to pay!”
Styll adds, “This has been a very fun progress. The way that our organization is structured is that Steven is our visionary. We work with the Entrepreneur Operating System with Steve as the visionary and me as the integrator. Really, Steven is a researcher. He loves getting in and finding out stuff. I’ve never opened a new restaurant before.”
“This will be our fourth!” adds Steven.
The group is uniquely qualified to take on this undertaking, having already revitalized two other Nashville icons.
“We knew we could come in and work on this concept which really had a great brand name and is in what looks like a great location,” explains Steven.
Brandon adds: “This location makes sense for us because if you look at Mere Bulles or Green Hills Grille, we are hyper-local. We are neighborhood restaurants that really serve our community within that 3- to 4-mile radius of the restaurant. We want to be the Cheers sort of restaurant where everybody knows your name! We want to take care of the people that live in that neighborhood.”
Throughout COVID, Green Hills Grille ramped up their delivery business using their own employees to do the driving for cost savings and quality control reasons, and they expect carryout and delivery to be an important part of the business at Chago Nuevo (my name, not theirs).
Speaking for the kitchen, Christopher is pleased that they took this responsibility on: “You own it! If someone calls and says that it’s not right, you can’t blame it on the Uber person. You did it.”
Styll continues, “The fact that someone in our kitchen puts it in our bag, it never leaves our possession. The most important part in that whole process is when we drop it off. It’s the community aspect of knowing who your guest is and using their name. It’s extending that relationship via delivery versus some random guy dropping it off. That’s very intentional.”
What changes will we see in the menu, in the interior and in the customer experience at Chago’s Belmont Cantina?
Steven describes some interior upgrades, especially in the kitchen.
“We’ve never worked in a restaurant this small," he says. "To-go and delivery are such a large part of our business, we know that’s gonna be x% of what we sell. To be able to execute that and the indoor component, we know we’ll need a larger kitchen, so that’s where we’re primarily working to enlarge the kitchen and upgrade.”
Decor-wise, Steven promises that they’ll add some booths, bring tables to take advantage of the roll-up doors and change the color scheme up a bit. They also plan to upgrade the back bar and spruce up the interior in general.
As far as the menu goes, Christopher says some of the changes are still in flux.
“It’s a small box, so it can’t be a hundred items," he says. "We’ll have four different tacos, burritos, and bowls. We’ll play with some appetizers, get some ceviche in there. We’ll do more salads than Chago’s had. It’s one of the prime items that Green Hills has.”
Steven added that in one year, 100% of their sales growth was in salads, even if Mexican restaurants traditionally don’t have a lot of salads.
They plan to ask questions of their early customers and make changes to the menu, and they’re not waiting to open to start their research.
"I think Steven said it really well," Styll explains. "We like to do good food that people like to eat. We’re not the place to come to try the brand new thing. We’re going to make everything from scratch.”
In fact, if you want a preview of some of the potential new menu items, you might want to check the weekly specials at Green Hills Grille, where Christopher is trying out some interesting experiments as they start the menu over from scratch at Chago’s.
“There’s a whole lot of different equipment that’s going in [the Chago’s kitchen], but the footprint is the same," he says. "The hoods don’t move. To me, it will be more of a dedicated prep area. We moved some walls for a dedicated salad station and to handle the to-go program. My whole thing is: how can I cook everything faster? That’s what I’m working on.”
“When you’ve got limited space,” Steven adds, “you’ve got to pick and choose what goes in every single inch.”
The bar program will feature a top-shelf collection of tequilas and also happy hour margaritas.
“I’m very bullish on the bar program,” promises Styll. “I recognize that there’s a very special thing about the Mexican restaurant that you go to and the margarita that you drink. Our goal is making a margarita that everybody would enjoy and want to come back on a regular basis. It is that easy. We want to nourish our community and make every guest a repeat guest. We’re really excited to do this at this restaurant. I’m so excited that ‘we’ve never done it that way’ is not part of the vernacular here.”
The last big menu question I asked for myself selfishly: What would happen to Chago’s beloved queso recipe?
“It’s at the Green Hills Grille right now," Christopher responds. "That’s what I came up with, and we’re going to roll with it. We’ll have the ability at Chago’s to add more things to it. That’s kind of our plan, we started it early to see if it worked, and it ended up becoming the #2 appetizer at that restaurant.”
One thing customers won’t encounter will be free tortilla chips and salsa at Chago’s. Styll explains, “It’ll be an appetizer, something you can add on for $3.99 or $4.99. We’ll probably do something similar to a trio like at the Grille. It’s our #3 appetizer with queso, salsa and our spinach artichoke dip. We’re going to have some different dips on the menu that you’ll be able to pair with the trio. It’s not a sit down, here’s your bowl of chips and salsa, start eating kind of thing. I always called that ‘the airplane treatment’ anyway. They give you the spicy and salty stuff and then five minutes later they give you a drink and you want to die!”
Steven dives deep on that decision.
“From a business perspective, certainly we’re not underpaying in rent. This is Nashville, Tennessee," he says. "People’s eyes go blank when you start talking about the business of restaurants; they don’t really want to hear that. But giving away free things when you may order something else impacts your bottom line and your check average. It’s just not something we feel comfortable doing at the outset, especially as we get a handle on operating what is essentially a hundred-seat restaurant, versus the 200-seat and 257-seat restaurants that we already operate. Crunching numbers on those is going to be important and tricky.”
We got a little deeper on the economics of free food during the interview, so if you want more details, make sure to listen to the end. If there’s any team that will be able to leverage their experience to make Chago’s even more successful, I would bet on these three guys and their talented management staff. Plans are to open seven days a week sometime in June, so keep an eye on this space for additional details as the opening date approaches.
