Two employees have purchased beloved neighborhood restaurant Retreat Gastropub (6 North Sarah Street, retreatgastropub.com) from founder Travis Howard, who is also co-owner of Yellow Belly and Lazy Tiger.
Jennifer Anderson and Sydney Caldwell are the new owners of the Central West End spot. Anderson has been with Retreat since 2016, and Caldwell joined the staff in 2018 to put herself through graduate school. Even as they’ve risen through the ranks — Anderson started as a server and rose to general manager in 2020, and Caldwell eventually became bar manager — they fell in love, got married and now are co-owners.
“We're just super grateful that Travis gave us this opportunity to continue the legacy that he’s built here, and we're really excited to keep it going,” Anderson says.
Howard says that he had been fairly “disconnected from the day to day” of the restaurant and less passionate about the eight-year-old project than he once was. He’d gone back and forth on the idea to sell in the back of his head for a while, but he was not interested in passing the reins to a random person. He approached Anderson and Caldwell one day and asked if they’d be interested in owning a restaurant. When they said yes, he proposed that spot be Retreat.
“We were just shocked,” Anderson recalls, saying there were no hints from Howard about the upcoming move. “It was a surprise. A wonderful, wonderful surprise.”
That was a little more than a year ago — turns out selling a restaurant is a long process that entails financing, turning over the lease, getting a new liquor license and more.
Now that things are finally settled, Howard says that he feels good about turning over Retreat, the first restaurant he founded, to its new owners and grateful for the neighborhood that has supported it all this time.
“It’s a little bittersweet because it opened a lot of doors for myself and my partner Tim [Wiggins],” he says. “But at the same time, I couldn't feel better about passing it off. … I’m pretty positive Retreat will still be successful, and I still am willing to help them in whatever way is needed to contribute to that success and to their success.”
He’s planning on using his newly open schedule to look for new opportunities. That might be a new restaurant with the Yellow Belly team or focusing on his real estate and renovation ventures.
As for Caldwell and Anderson, they plan to keep much the same at Retreat but have a few ideas about things they’d like to change up. They’ve hired a new chef, Drake Cleeton, and asked him to work on giving a few of the dishes a modern twist. They would also like to give the place a slight facelift once they have saved some money and to add a catered lunch option for the neighborhood Cortex worker crew.
“We really just want to continue trying to take better and better care of our staff,” Caldwell says, suggesting they’ll try to add employment perks, such as paid time off, when it’s financially possible.
That’s not the only thing that Caldwell and Anderson are planning. Though they got hitched in September, they will be having a wedding reception on New Year’s Eve — but not at Retreat. That, they say, would be too much like work.
But if they had gone that route, it would have been fitting, because the two met at Retreat. Their romance began when Caldwell was supposed to cover a catered event by herself. Seeing the size of the huge cooler full of bruschetta and cocktail fixings, Anderson stepped in to help out.
“Things just kind of happened slowly,” Anderson says. “She's my best friend. I am lucky to say that I married my best friend. And we get to do this crazy thing together.”
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