scratch-kitchen
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The Restaurant Chain That Put a Doctor in the Recipe Loop
True Food Kitchen built a national restaurant brand around an unlikely operating system: an anti-inflammatory food pyramid. Its real trick is making nutrition science feel less like homework and more like dinner.
Bowling, Brunch, and a Second Life
Punch Bowl Social built a business on the idea that grown-ups still want to play. Then a pandemic closed all 19 rooms - and the comeback got stranger than the concept.
Firebirds Wood Fired Grill
Firebirds found a durable gap between the neighborhood grill and the expense-account steakhouse. Now, with 71 restaurants, a paid loyalty tier and private-equity backing, it is trying to scale the feeling of dinner around a real fire.
Smith
Smith is an Asbury Park-based hospitality group that grew out of a 1990s branding and design studio. Beginning in 2006 with Brickwall Tavern, its partners helped restart a stalled downtown, then built a collective of restaurants and bars - Porta, Pascal & Sabine, Homesick, and Lovesick - that pair scratch kitchens with art-filled rooms. Smith treats hospitality as an instrument of urban renewal, designing, branding, and operating each venue in-house.