116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Fun Not Fancy restaurant group sees rapid growth in Cedar Rapids, Marion
But downtown lull, Kingston’s big boys pose new challenges
Jun. 30, 2024 5:00 am, Updated: Jul. 3, 2024 9:37 am
Justin Zehr, co-owner in the restaurant group Fun Not Fancy, works the grill at the June 15 BBQ Patio Party at LP Street Food in Cedar Rapids, The restaurant is part of the Fun Not Fancy group, which has grown to include seven properties in Cedar Rapids and Marion in the past six years. (Geoff Stellfox/The Gazette)
Customers dine in during opening day at Sacred Cow Tavern in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on November 1, 2022. (Savannah Blake/The Gazette)
These Spam fries are served with a horseradish mustard dipping sauce at Cliff’s Dive Bar and Grill in Cedar Rapids. (Savannah Blake/The Gazette)
Tiffany-style lamps hang from the ceiling over barrel-shaped booths at The Hip-stir, 1120 Seventh Ave. in Marion. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)
CEDAR RAPIDS — Over the past six years, unserious ideas have become serious business for one of Linn County’s fastest growing, independent restaurant groups.
In the Fun Not Fancy restaurant group -- which now includes seven properties -- tongue-in-cheek concepts translate to food and drink for the table in different, but consistent, ways across the board.
At the Sacred Cow Tavern in Oak Hill Jackson, a neon sign invites diners to “kiss our grass” across from a mural of cows parodying the three wise monkeys in a building that used to be a church.
At Cliff’s Dive Bar in downtown Cedar Rapids, Cheetos-covered Spam fries and entree names not fit for print are inspired by stoner humor that finds a home under a gaudy display of rec room fixtures.
If you’re feeling too cool to be seen in those concepts, The Hip-stir in Marion will give you privacy to eat some Asian-inspired fusions in the comfort of your own barrel booth.
In a notoriously difficult industry, the restaurant owners who accidentally became a restaurant group have managed to hold their own.
Since buying into Bricks Bar & Grill in Cedar Rapids and launching their first new restaurant together with LP Street Food in 2018, they’ve grown to seven restaurants across Cedar Rapids and Marion — and have yet to close one.
“Our mantra at the beginning is if (an idea) makes us laugh, we need to do it,” said Justin Zehr, one of the group’s owners.
“If you bring someone into your restaurant already smiling and laughing, you’ve already won,” said Tim Kindl, another Fun Not Fancy owner.
How it happened
Zehr and Kindl got acquainted while working at Cedar Rapids’ Chop House in the early 2000s.
While trying to go back to school for engineering, Kindl came to know an owner at Bricks through a job selling credit card processing systems. Kindl installed a system there, among many other restaurants, on the side while attending school.
A former owner of Bricks wanted out of the business, giving Kindl the opportunity to become an owner in 2011.
Zehr, who fell in love with food and restaurants after following some friends into Kirkwood Community College’s culinary program, came back into the picture a few years later with a vision for LP Street Food at a spot on Third Avenue SW. But back then, the location in Kingston Village was an unknown.
“There was not a lot of belief in thinking that neighborhood would turn into what it is,” Zehr said.
But they opened it on a dime in 2018 by building their own tables and bars, refurbishing old equipment and tearing down half a barn to repurpose the interior. Before long, business was booming.
More than that, though, it was the first in a chain reaction of openings that would catapult the group to the size it is today.
In 2019, Kindl and Zehr couldn’t resist the nostalgia inside Dick’s Tap & Shake Room, which was closing in the building at 1600 E. Ave. NE that had been a longtime neighborhood landmark as Mahoney’s Irish Pub. So they turned it into Moco Game Room & Hot Dog Bar with vintage decor from secondhand stores lining the walls.
The Hip-stir, their first opening outside of Cedar Rapids, started to find more polish in its interior design with an Uptown Marion opening in November 2021, bringing group owner Tim Oathout into the fold.
A month later, Cliff’s Dive Bar delivered the exact opposite, bringing in partner Cale Henderson with a campy, kitschy theme in downtown Cedar Rapids at 227 Second Ave. SE.
Sacred Cow then brought new life to a long abandoned building in the Oak Hill Jackson neighborhood in October 2022.
Taco Gato, a southern and Tex-Mex hybrid injecting loud design to a small space opened next to Cliff’s in April 2023.
A few rounds after LP Street Food’s opening, the venture that started with wanting to serve tiki cocktails and relatively common foods in a novel way became a restaurant group — something none of the entrepreneurs had planned from the outset.
“We were hashtagging ‘Fun Not Fancy’ long before the idea of the restaurant group existed,” Zehr said. “There was no thought of having a restaurant group. It escalated quickly.”
And what better name for a collection of irreverent themes, they thought, than one that eschews formality.
Ingredients for success
With the marriage of type A and type B personalities in the mix of partners, fun themes with eye-catching decor did not come mutually exclusive to solid business sense.
The group cites its company culture, built on mutual respect, as a reason for its ability to continue growing. With a culture that ties quirky elements together cohesively, a good sense of humor turns out to build grace not only with satisfied customers but also from the staff that serves them.
This has come in handy as the industry grapples with historic labor shortages and struggles to balance palatable menu prices with a rise in hourly wages.
The founders of the group also cite the growth in quality partners with new openings as a factor in their sustainability. But despite external interest in franchising, Fun Not Fancy has no intention of pursuing a copy and paste model.
“We don’t force concepts into locations. I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes people do,” Zehr said. “We (aim to) complement what’s around it.”
‘Not common’
Growth of independent, locally owned concepts as rapid as Fun Not Fancy’s is “not common at all,” said Jessica Dunker, president and CEO of the Iowa Restaurant Association. Last year, 38 percent of restaurants in Iowa didn’t bring in enough revenue to be profitable, she said.
Many restaurateurs didn’t hesitate to close restaurants early in the COVID-19 pandemic to save capital for new opportunities later on.
Being competitive today -- with supply chain shortages, labor shortages, inflation and permanently changed dining habits -- requires a restaurant to compete on the experience it offers, Dunker said.
Studies show that 60 percent of consumers are more willing to pay for an experience than they are to buy an item.
The creative process that makes those experiences for Fun Not Fancy diners today is less conventional than the process for many serial entrepreneurs.
“We probably do things backwards from what most people do,” Kindl said. “They have an idea of what the menu is going to look like, or what the interior is going to look like. I just go sit on the floor.”
Making ample use of secondhand stores and Facebook Marketplace, they ensure there are no undesirable seats in the house. If the decor looks a little busy in some places, it probably is by design — a tell that lets diners know they’re in a Fun Not Fancy establishment, even if they can’t quite put their finger on why.
Challenges ahead
With a lull in traffic compounded by big establishments opening a few blocks away in the Kingston Yard development, Zehr and Kindl said they worry about the future of the group’s holdings in downtown Cedar Rapids.
Ever since the buzz of daily 9-to-5 workers left downtown to work from home in 2020, foot traffic has been stunted, with no return in sight.
The Fun Not Fancy owners say their business only sees a bump in sales when popular acts are booked at venues down the street. A Thursday night with trending entertainment at a downtown venue brings sales exponentially larger than a typical Friday night these days, they say.
“We need downtown to be good — period. We shouldn’t need to have a popular comedian in town to do a decent amount of sales,” Zehr said.
They’re not alone in this new normal.
Dunker, from the Iowa Restaurant Association, said foot traffic is down for many restaurants to levels not seen in two decades. That poses different challenges from past economic downturns, when traffic remained steady but ordering habits changed — sharing an entree, getting water instead of soda, skipping appetizers and alcohol.
Customer volume and table turnover, elements restaurants rely on for profitability, are no longer givens.
Fun Not Fancy’s owners also are concerned about the dominance of a new Big Grove Brewery taproom and the three-level Pickle Palace at First Street and First Avenue SW. The large venues have enough seats to gobble up the capacity of virtually all their restaurants combined.
“It affects everything within a couple miles. It’s a simple reality,” Zehr said. “It can be exciting for a community, but it can also hurt at the same time.”
Returning to a refrain that brings optimism to many restaurants, Dunker says there’s hope for those competing against larger players. Smaller venues can survive by providing an experience that larger ones can’t match.
“Restaurants that are growing now have a value proposition that’s enticing and experiential,” she said. “People will still go out for an experience.”
Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or elijah.decious@thegazette.com.
Fun Not Fancy
The Cedar Rapids-based Fun Not Fancy restaurant group includes seven restaurants and bars:
Bricks Bar & Grill, 320 Second Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids
LP Street Food, 302 Third Ave. SW, Cedar Rapids
Moco Game Room & Hot Dog Bar, 1600 E Ave. NE, Cedar Rapids
The Hip-stir, 1120 Seventh Ave., Marion
Sacred Cow Tavern, 1000 Seventh St. SE, Cedar Rapids
Cliff’s Dive Bar, 227 Second Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids
Taco Gato, 209 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids
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