A Jackson couple undercut the cost of goods and opened an artisan pasta restaurant
- The video shows Love, Pasta on Horton Road in Jackson.
- Married couple Ridge and Mariel found love in Vegas and knew they wanted to open their own handmade pasta restaurant in Jackson.
- Despite the difficult economic situation, they did not let the cost of goods or inflation thwart their plans to open Love, Pasta.
Opening a restaurant is hard enough. Struggling with the cost of produce and inflation can make anyone put their dreams on hold. But one Jackson couple decided that now was the time to open an Italian restaurant.
“We talked about it for years and it completely changed our lives,” says co-owner Ridge Frew. He and his wife, Mariel, thought they had the perfect recipe for a restaurant. Mariel explains, “Our focus from the beginning was on craftsmanship.” That vision led them from their first meeting in Las Vegas to here in Jackson. “It just seemed like a great place to raise our kids. We liked the size of the community. It just seemed like a place we wanted to be,” she continues.
Ridge and Mariel searched for four years for a place that had all the ingredients they needed. “This place really seemed to tick all the boxes,” Mariel says. Love, Pasta opened last week on Horton Road.
The Frews have put together an affordable menu with high-quality ingredients:
What did you consider when selecting the Love, Pasta menu?
“The basis for most of our dishes is high-quality tomatoes and high-quality flour. The great thing is that homemade pasta is much cheaper than packaged pasta,” says Ridge. The Frews say when it comes to cutting costs, ingredients matter, and handmade pasta is key to their restaurant’s business model.
“We definitely thought about the cost of the products and what products we could offer on a menu that was really high quality but affordable for everyone. Pasta lends itself well to that,” says Mariel. Love, Pasta uses as simple pasta ingredients as possible, which gives them room to splurge on ingredients they feel are necessary, like imported tomatoes from Europe.
When it comes to pasta, Ridge says that making it yourself means there is almost no waste, so costs are well controlled. Another of the Frews’ secret sauces is buying select products locally to avoid common supply chain issues. “If this concept had come about two years ago, we would have had a lot of ups and downs in the supply chain,” says Ridge. For them, the four-year wait for the perfect location was almost a godsend. Now, Love, Pasta is a place that the Frews consider worth the wait.
Love, Pasta currently has seven handmade pasta dishes on the menu, as well as several salad and appetizer dishes and a long list of craft cocktails.
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