Q&A: Agave & Rye – A Chain on the Grow

Editor’s Note: Agave & Rye is a young restaurant with great aspirations. Even though the restaurant is just 18 months old, it already has two locations open, one more planned for later in 2019, and six planned for 2020. In this interview, co-owner Yavonne Sarber discusses her restaurant’s origins and her expectations for the years ahead.

El Restaurante: When and why did you launch Agave & Rye?

Yavonne Sarber: We opened in Covington, Kentucky in February of last year. My husband Wade and I have a fine dining background and really were looking for a fresh, fun way that we could pay homage to the food we love and give the food the attention it deserves but yet, serving it in a non-pretentious fun way. For us, the taco was the best vessel the we could possibly think of. People think tacos, they think fun. That's how the whole thing started.

What was your background?

I’m an interior designer by trade, but before that I worked the front of house for master chefs. For example, I worked for Chef Hartmut Handke for six years, and he's the reason that I'm a restaurateur today. I really got the bug for restaurant work but I didn't realize it until I got out of the restaurant industry to be a designer. So in 2007 we put a little coffee shop in our design studio and very quickly thought, why don't we get our liquor license and turn it into a jazz club? And then it just started going from there. Next we opened a place called DeNovo Bistro in downtown Columbus and that is more on the fine dining side of things, with proper French technique. Then I hired a restaurant coach, Ryan Gromfin, and we developed Agave & Rye. I'll be darned if it isn't magical.

What makes it magical?

Well, it really is something that is completely different than what you've ever experienced. We’re able to deliver tacos in an epic way but we also have about 15 other things like duck on clean rice; kangaroo; natural chicken; and mac and cheese; we have a triple poached truffle lobster. I've been in the industry long enough that I know what people like, what they don't like, what excites them, and I follow those guidelines. I write the menu and Ryan creates the recipes.

            We get in all of our protein fresh, and we get produce five days a week. We make every sauce. Everything is fresh, nothing is frozen.

            And the décor is important, too. We call it urban chic. We really emphasize lighting and art, so we have local artists who do the murals and other paintings. One artist in particular is Poemgogeo. He's originally out of San Francisco and he specializes in fine art painting. People walk in and are in awe of his work.

What made you feel that Agave & Rye was ready for expansion?

It's kind of crazy how it happened. When we opened the Covington location, we had absolutely no thought of expanding at all, actually. We thought this would be the one and only. From day one when we opened our doors it was a success. And it kept building and building and we had quite a few investment people that approached us, but we weren't interested in sitting down with them at all. But, there was one individual in particular who loved our concept so much. He kept coming in with his family, and with his colleagues, like three or four times a week. And every time he'd come in for lunch he'd just say, "I want to grow you. I want to grow you." Finally, in August of last year we agreed to sit down with him and found that our ethic, his character, everything that we are about matched with his. We ended up signing on with him last October. So, here we go.

Have you encountered any unexpected challenges?

I can tell you that we have the mindset to get better every day, and we're certainly hiring people stronger than us in areas that we aren't quite experts in. But my restaurant coach said something to me when we first started meeting a couple years and I didn't quite understand it until it clicked. He said: “The restaurant industry is really hard until it's not.” We finally are starting to understand what he means by that. When you get your systems in place. You understand your brand. You know the direction you're headed in. It really starts to roll in motion.

Interview by Ed Avis, publisher of el Restaurante.

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