The team behind the Sweet Carrot food truck has not yet gotten their first brick-and-mortar restaurant up and running, but they’ve already made plans for a second location. The restaurant and catering group announced today that their Sweet Carrot concept will become the new tenant of the historic Kilbourne Memorial Building in Worthington next summer.
“We were originally looking in Worthington for our first Sweet Carrot location because our other business Two Caterers was originally there for over nine years,” explained owner Angela Petro.”It’s a market we’re very comfortable with, and it’s a perfect fit to have a family restaurant and community restaurant for that area.”
Sweet Carrot is partnering with the Worthington Community Improvement Corporation (CIC) to utilize 2,400 square feet of space in the city-owned building located at 752 High Street in Old Worthington. Worthington City Council will vote next week to authorize the lease agreement.
“We are very excited to have this moving forward with Sweet Carrot as our anchor tenant,” said CIC Chairperson and Council President Bonnie Michael. “It will be a great addition to our community.”
The project would be the third historic preservation effort for the company, which is working to renovate the former Rife’s Market at 1417 West Fifth Avenue into the first Sweet Carrot restaurant, and previously renovated an old streetcar facility in the Brewery District to create the High Line Car House event venue.
Petro said that they plan to start construction on the Worthington location in late winter or early spring with an opening planned for early summer 2016. She added that she wanted to have at least six months of operation under her belt with the Fifth Avenue Sweet Carrot restaurant before opening the Worthington location.
“We’re on schedule for a fall opening on Fifth Avenue,” she said. “If we can hit the first week of November, I would be thrilled. We want to take our time and make sure our employees have some practice rounds. We’ve seen too many restaurants too eager to open quickly, and they end up doing damage control their first few months. We don’t want to open just to open.”
Petro spoke to Columbus Underground on the phone today while working on a catering job at this weekend’s Country Living Fair. She said that it was at this event several years ago where she got the idea for opening a brick-and-mortar version of her Sweet Carrot food truck.
“We had people from Traverse City, Michigan to Atlanta, Georgia at this event asking us to open a Sweet Carrot restaurant in their cities, but we didn’t even have one in Columbus,” she explained. “So I knew that we really had to do this.”
For more information, visit www.sweetcarrot.com.
Renderings provided by the Worthington Community Improvement Corporation.
