Budd Dairy Food Hall opened in the Italian Village on April 6. Credit: Marisa Allen | Lantern Reporter
This story has been updated for the BuckeyeBound edition.
A former Columbus milk production and delivery company has opened its doors for the first time since 1967 and is now specializing in more than dairy.
Budd Dairy Food Hall, located in the Italian Village at 1086 N. Fourth St. and parented by Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, opened its doors April 6. The food hall features ten kitchens for independent chef partners looking to expand their businesses and share their talent with the community and one “Hatch” kitchen, which acts as a pop-up location for a series of rotating chefs to test new recipes and grow their presence.
The chef partners specialize in a variety of food types, ranging from southern comfort dishes and American classics to Hawaiian-inspired poke and Filipino street food. Jenny James, senior marketing and events manager for Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, said Budd Dairy is designed to support its chef partners and give them a launchpad to focus on their food and relationship with the community.
“A lot of these chef partners, this is either their first venue, or maybe it’s their second, so a lot of them are just getting things figured out,” James said. “That’s why the food hall concept is great for them. We’re taking care of all the backend stuff — so they all have, for lack of a better word, little stalls that they have to make all this magic happen — so they really can just focus on their food.”
Budd Dairy is meant to be a place to grab a bite to eat, but it also has the potential to serve other purposes, Jeremy Hughes, general manager at Budd Dairy Food Hall, said. He said he hopes it will also serve as a venue for events and community activities in the near future once the hall’s chef partners have settled in.
“We really want this place to be the spot for people to come to have events,” Hughes said. “We want to do yoga on the rooftop — there’s all kinds of possibilities. A farmer’s market is something we would like to long-term have on site here one day a week. Right now we’re really just focused on making sure our operations in the food hall are as solid as they can be.”
The pandemic was a big challenge for Budd Dairy Food Hall, and Hughes said the grand opening of the hall was delayed due to the severity of COVID-19 in the Columbus area.
“We were slated to open last May, and unfortunately about seven weeks prior to opening, we were hit with the pandemic and the shutdowns, so that forced us to kind of take a look at our operations,” Hughes said. “At the end of the day, we kept the restaurant closed because we wanted to make sure our chef partners were going to be able to survive and succeed.”
The food hall has indoor and outdoor seating to provide the ideal safe and healthy dining experience with a variety of food choices in each dining space. James said the food hall has been successful since its opening, experiencing a consistent flow of community members.
“It’s been busy,” James said. “It’s been great — we’ve gotten a lot of traction on social media. I can tell you that we have a lot of different age groups.”
The hall is open Tuesday and Wednesday from 4-11 p.m., Thursday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11-1 a.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. More information about Budd Dairy can be found on its website and Instagram.
