Cafe at Fellows gardens getting overhaul

YOUNGSTOWN

The Garden Cafe at Fellows Riverside Gardens will reopen to visitors next month with some big changes to the restaurant that overlooks Lake Glacier.

A new name and menu are among those changes.

The cafe, previously operated by The Georgetown, is now The Friends Specialty at the Garden Cafe after Friends Specialty was awarded a three-year contract for the cafe in December.

Friends, a coffee-and-tea shop owned by married couple Mitch Lynch and Patricia Tinkler of Salem, has locations in Salem and downtown Youngstown.

The Georgetown’s 13-year run as the provider at the cafe came to an end when the park system’s leadership began thinking about a change. When The Georgetown’s one-year contract for 2014 expired, Friends was chosen to rent the space, which is inside the D.D. & Velma Davis Education and Visitor Center.

Friends was the highest bidder: the owners offered $1,200 in rent per month plus 6 percent of gross sales.

Though money was a consideration, “it’s also the proposal they gave us of what they have to offer,” said Keith Kaiser, Mill Creek MetroParks horticulture director.

“Everything we do at Fellows Riverside Gardens has to connect people with plants,” he said.

Friends, he thinks, will do just that.

“We’re trying to make the focus be the lake and the woods and the flora,” Lynch said. “When you’re eating here, we want you to be enjoying that.”

Lynch also plans to make connections between plants featured in the gardens, and menu items.

Lynch and Tinkler emphasize the local, the fresh and the healthy in making their products. So the cafe’s menu is getting an overhaul.

“The long-range vision is to educate people to eat better,” Lynch said.

Another change to the cafe is that it now will be a sit-down restaurant with a hostess and servers.

“We feel that this can be one of the nicest eating venues in town,” Lynch said.

Read more about the plans in Sunday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.