Former Lenox Tavern Owners to Open Eatery at Pittsfield HotelBy Brittany Polito, iBerkshires Staff
02:20AM / Monday, August 09, 2021 | |
 The former owners of the Olde Heritage Tavern in Lenox are opening a restaurant in the Holiday Inn in Pittsfield. |
The new logo speaks to McNinch's love of Dalmatians.
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The former owners of the Olde Heritage Tavern in Lenox are opening a restaurant in the Holiday Inn after selling the eatery in March.
The new venture called 101 Restaurant and Bar is named after John McNinch and his family's love for Dalmatians and will serve a slightly elevated version of the American cuisine that they are known for.
Their goal is to create another feel-good space where residents and visitors can have a nice meal or a drink.
"We want to bring just a nice, local friendly location, like The Heritage was in Lenox," McNinch said. "Obviously, we're gonna have the hotel guests as regular, direct customers and then we want just a place for people to be comfortable and happy."
On Monday, he announced in a Facebook post that he and his son Tucker will be re-entering the hospitality industry but this time, in downtown Pittsfield.
"Here we go again! So happy to announce that Tucker and I will be starting the McNinch Restaurant Group (MRG)!" McNinch wrote. "Ever since we sold the Heritage 4 months ago, we have been looking for the best way to create MRG, and can now share that our first restaurant, 101, will be opening soon at the Holiday Inn in Pittsfield. (the old Crowne Plaza) Follow us at the MRG and 101 pages for updates!"
The plan is to be open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a focus on more entree offerings as well as bar food. McNinch wants to open for just breakfast as soon as possible while the liquor license is being transferred over and they plan for full-day operations.
"Our dinners will be more on the entree side and you know, we will still have some of the similar things, we'll still have burgers but we're just going to have more steaks and things like that," he said. "It's what you want to call sort of a next step up from the Heritage."
McNinch announced the sale of their former restaurant in March to buyers who are currently operating it under the same name. He said it was time to move on after 21 years and test different waters.
Though they weren't specifically searching for a location in Pittsfield, the opportunity to be in the Holiday Inn was presented and they saw it as a chance to add to the downtown dining scene.
The empty space within the hotel previously housed Jae's One West Asian-fusion restaurant and has been shuttered for months.
"My son and I, when we decided when we were selling the Heritage, that we were going to go into business together and start a business together, we had some things that we were thinking about doing, and trying to do that didn't work out," McNinch explained.
"We thought we would be helping to operate some restaurants in the area, and then as we were looking for different things, we're looking to purchase and do other things here, this sort of just fell into our lap and we started looking at it, and we got excited about it."
In addition, he and his son have future plans to start a training program that gives people who are not experienced in the restaurant industry skills that can be used to make a fulfilling career while filling jobs in the area.
This would be possible because of the large size of the kitchen facilities at the hotel.
"Getting staff has always been, especially on the kitchen side, has always been an incredibly hard thing to do in this area, getting trained staff is really hard," McNinch said.
"So we want to sort of work on a little training program where we bring people in, we train them, and then we help them find jobs in the area, it's just sort of an extra thing we want to do to sort of bringing just a lot of a lot of people to work in this industry."
They are currently beginning the hiring process for a chef, kitchen, and wait staff. Because of local and national trends that are rendering the hospitality industry short-staffed during the pandemic, he has some concern with staffing and won't begin dinner until they are fully staffed to best serve new and old customers.
McNinch is excited to be applying the principles that made the Heritage a well-loved destination into a new location with a new spin.
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