“Why are you opening a new restaurant during a pandemic? How are you opening a new restaurant during a pandemic?”
These are the first two questions I asked Scott Baird. For me, the past eight months have been filled with reporting on businesses pivoting to stay open, doing my own professional pivots, and trying to remember what day it is. It’s difficult to get my head around the undertaking of launching a new restaurant in a new-construction building — a hotel, no less — while navigating Metro Nashville’s so-called Roadmap to Reopening.
The short answer, of course, is that there were signed leases, bills to pay and investors to satisfy.
Baird agreed to give the Scene the long answer. He invited us to look at what it has taken to open Zeppelin, the rooftop dinner spot at the new TownePlace Suites Nashville hotel on Gay Street. Over the months that I have been gathering string on Baird and his company Big Little Fish, the following happened: His initial chef left and he hired a new one; he realized he is going to have to completely redo the restaurant’s brand-new floors; he navigated differences of opinion on furniture finishes and art; he made too-large kitchen appliances fit; and he juggled hiring and training, plus the usual construction delays. The original opening date was supposed to be in March. And then June, in time for the CMA Music Festival, and then the Fourth of July. Doors finally opened Nov. 6. And of course, there are the peculiarities of the pandemic.
“I thrive in chaos,” Baird says.
The hotel was developed by Deep Cove Partners and the Gettys Group, who also designed the space. Those two Chicago-area firms also own the two acres next to the TownePlace Suites, which they plan to develop into another hotel. Early on, the groups opted not to work with Marriott International — which operates the TownePlace Suites brand — to run on-site restaurants.
“We thought we needed a buzzworthy team,” says Reeve Waud, a partner at Deep Cove. When Waud and Roger Hill, chairman and CEO of the Gettys Group, met the team at Big Little Fish — which includes Baird, Will Friedrichs and Brett Orlando — they found their buzz.
Baird lives in Northern California, but he had worked on other local projects in the past, including running the Christmas pop-up bar at the Noelle hotel. He felt he had an understanding of the city’s strengths in restaurants and bars, and where there was opportunity. Like Waud and Hill, he saw potential in Nashville’s energy and audience.
The hotel is an area that some are now calling the Capitol District, between Germantown and downtown, near Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park and with a view of something folks don’t normally put in the brochures, Baird concedes. “There’s gonna be photographs of this place, and it is going to look amazing, and people are going to say, ‘That place is on top of the TownPlace Suites across the street from the jail?’ ”
The hotel is walking distance from many downtown attractions and First Horizon Park — and, yes, near the Downtown Detention Center. But it’s far enough away from the congestion that it can offer parking and reasonable room rates. And that will appeal to a certain kind of traveler, Hill believes. “As a consumer, I want to feel smart about it. It is the same way I feel smart when I go shop at Costco.”
Charred carrots
The idea is, of course, to welcome those guests from the hotel to have a drink or a bite to eat, but more so to welcome locals who live in the area and are looking for a neighborhood hangout — then surprise them with good food and drinks.
Zeppelin will have seating for 165 and an 18-seat bar (when there are no longer social distancing and capacity limitations). The aesthetic is arty and fun, but not over-the-top. (Yes, there is pink glitter on the floor of the women’s bathroom, but this is not White Limozeen.) It is a spaceship from California — soothing but not sleepy, and wide open thanks to the patio and the windows with unobstructed views.
Baird says the hotel was running at 12 percent occupancy when it first opened. Waud says TownePlace Suites chainwide are running at more than 50 percent occupancy. (For comparison, Davidson County’s 2019 hotel occupancy rate was 75.3 percent.)
“This thing is not going to support my family,” says Baird. “It may be supportive, but it could not pay my bills alone. If I think about all of that, the noise is too much; it is too scary. The deck is already stacked against me. I can’t charge what is fair, because people don’t understand what these things cost. If I actually charged what it really costs to get food on plates, nobody would eat in restaurants, it’s too expensive.” Baird estimates that after calculating high-quality ingredients (he’s asked Folk chef Philip Krajeck for introductions to local farmers) and paying fair wages, it would cost $100 per person to eat.
The margins of operating a restaurant, Baird says, are 9 cents for every dollar he sells — as opposed to the 40 cents he would make if he ran a bar. That means he needs a chef who not only can bring the lighter West Coast-influenced menu he envisioned, but also control food costs and not let one oyster go to waste.
Zeppelin staff meets before service
At the end of September, Baird and his team opened Moonshot Coffee on the first floor of the new hotel. Chef Jeffrey Rhodes, who was at Liberty Common beforehand, departed before Zeppelin opened and didn’t return messages requesting an interview. Baird says the two didn’t have the same vision for a menu that would bring something different to the city.
A few weeks after Rhodes left, Big Little Fish snagged Aaron Thebault to wear the white toque. Earlier this year Thebault moved to Nashville from Chicago, where he worked at renowned restaurants including Spiaggia and Girl and the Goat. He arrived as the chef at the new Joseph hotel, but found the always-open schedule of the hotel’s food service difficult to balance with the demands of having a newborn. After meeting with Baird and Friedrichs, he thought the Zeppelin direction and the schedule was a fit. And getting someone like Thebault on board is part of that “buzzworthy” approach Waud wanted.
Stephanie Izard, celebrity chef and owner of Chicago’s Girl and the Goat and Little Goat, praised Thebault in an email to the Scene.
“When Little Goat opened, we were so busy that I was not able to stop by Girl and the Goat for over a month,” Izard says. “Thebault … took charge of the Girl and the Goat kitchen, and managed to keep the restaurant running seamlessly without any plan in place.”
Hamachi crudo
At Zeppelin, there is a plan. The menu, designed collaboratively by Baird and Thebault, includes dishes such as hamachi crudo and charred carrots. If you want something heartier, there’s a patty melt. But the whole vibe stays away from heavy dishes, meat-and-three-style classics, and the “chicken fingers and flatbreads” Baird sees more often than he would like.
“Delicious, not precious” is Baird’s food mantra, one that he has put on T-shirts at several of his other past projects.
Baird is quick to correct me when I refer to Zeppelin as a restaurant in a hotel. “It is a restaurant attached to a hotel,” he says, while drinking coffee topped with a splash of Coca-Cola to combat a 3 p.m. energy dip. By that he means that the restaurant doesn’t offer all-day dining or room service that can overtax the staff. It is currently open for dinner only (although a rosé-heavy brunch on the patio is on the post-COVID wish list). There’s a separate entrance and elevator (on Third Avenue North) so diners don’t need to walk through the hotel to get to the restaurant. There’s a full bar too, and Baird brings his background in mixology to the wine and cocktail lists.
While Nashville unemployment rates hover around 10 percent, Baird says it has been a challenge to staff up. Experienced hospitality workers have returned to reopened restaurants or gone to work at other new restaurants, like Sean Brock’s The Continental in the Grand Hyatt. Some workers are receiving unemployment and not searching for new positions, while others have opted to work in industries with less exposure to the public. That means Zeppelin is training folks without a lot of restaurant experience, although many have worked in hospitality in bars on Broadway.
Hamachi crudo
Andrew Hoffman, the former managing partner with Comal in Berkeley, Calif., has worked with Baird on other projects, and he isn’t fazed by that. He’s seen Baird train green hospitality staff before and thinks Baird is the right person to make Zeppelin successful.
“I have worked with a ton of creative bartenders who make nice drinks, and that’s what they have done,” Hoffman says. “That is where Scott starts, not where he stops. What you need right now is the ability to be creative. We are in a sea shift with restaurants, and the ones that are going to make it are going to be creative and scrappy. That is great for Scott.”
