The food at Homespun Kitchen in Atlantic Beach has proven so popular that it will expand to a second location in Five Points in June.
It will take the former The Bread & Board location at 1030 Oak St. in the Riverside area.
Homespun Kitchen owner Aaron Levine, 45, said the new location places him in the same sort of walkable neighborhood environment as his Atlantic Beach restaurant at 299-2 Atlantic Blvd.
Some menu items are named after Atlantic Beach locals and he wants to do the same in Five Points.
Because the nearly 2,400-square-foot space has been a restaurant for years, it is set up with proper plumbing, oven exhaust hood and other food preparation necessities.
Levine expects to spend about $200,000 to open his newest Homespun Kitchen.
Sonshine Construction is the contractor.
Levine has made a teenage dream a reality by creating a restaurant that serves healthy food fast. He applied his technical mind to create his successful venture.
Levine grew up in Mandarin and graduated from The Bolles School in 1994. He went on to graduate from the University of Florida in 2000 as a mechanical engineer.
He worked for five years in Gainesville with Crom Corp., which specializes in building prestressed, composite water tanks. On weekends he would engineer barbecue pits for members of his work team.
He left Crom in 2004 to work with his father’s tech company, Pinnacle Communications International.
By 2009, Levine went out on his own to open two yogurt shops called Happy Cup. One was at his current location in Atlantic Beach and the other was in Tinseltown.
Levine comes from a line of entrepreneurs. He watched his father and grandfather work hard and recalls his father working from his deathbed in 2020.
He learned from their successes and their pitfalls.
“They didn’t have the type of success they would have liked to have had. I didn’t come from wealth. I had the privilege to learn from their mistakes,” Levine said.
The Tinseltown location didn’t last long. He closed it to concentrate on the Atlantic Beach store.
Seeing he was competing against large franchises he decided to implement his idea of serving healthful food, prepared in front of the customers, with an emphasis on a quick and delicious dining experience.
“Yogurt is a compressed market. If you don’t have a unique and diversified product that is first to market it makes it tough,” he said.
Homespun Kitchen still serves frozen yogurt, but that represents only 1% of sales.
However, frozen yogurt is an ingredient in several smoothie recipes, which comprise 15%.
All the while he was envisioning how he could convert the 1,200-square-foot yogurt shop into a viable restaurant space.
Levine designed it all, from the storage to the kitchen to the serving line. The small restaurant has a few seats inside and on the sidewalk.
The Five Points location will be larger, seating about 44 inside and another 20 outside.
Like the original location, he expects to hire 20 to 25 employees.
Since rebranding to become Homespun Kitchen in 2016, the restaurant has shown steady growth.
It posted a 20% earnings increase in 2019, broke even in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic and rebounded with an almost 45% increase in sales last year.
Levine reports that during the first quarter of 2022 the restaurant is 35% ahead of projections. Because it is a private company he declined to provide financial figures.
Levine says he sells two products – healthy food and hospitality.
His business model empowers managers. They understand his methods and his system.
His 14-year-old daughter, Margot, wants to work at the restaurant. When the time comes, she will apply like anyone else and talk to a store manager.
“I want to be her father, not her boss,” Levine said.
There is one last step before hiring new employees – a 25-page hospitality manual.
They are told to read it, learn it and be prepared to be tested on it before they are given the job.
Levine finds that employees who are willing to take the test buy into the Homespun Kitchen culture.
“I believe we pay well and we work in a no yelling environment,” he said.
Those without experience start at $10 an hour plus tips and those with leadership experience start between $11 and $12 plus tips.
He has a goal of his management team earning in the six figures in the next couple of years.
“Our hope was that it would happen at the end of 2023. I won’t guarantee anything but we are on our way.”
Levine attempts to serve as much locally grown, USDA organic, all-natural, non-GMO products as possible. Breakfast is served throughout the day. The majority of the menu comprises bowls and wraps with much of the bread made in-house.
Meat eaters can choose from chicken, ham and turkey.
Being in a tourist town, Levine has had customers from around the country ask when he would expand.
Since meeting Wendy’s owner Dave Thomas when the entrepreneur spoke at UF, expansion has been part of the business plan.
“I want to take on McDonald’s and Wendy’s. I’m not getting any younger.”
Levine wants to have two more locations ready in 2023.
“The plans are to expand, but let’s get this second one up and running first,” he said.
