Tony Donatell just couldn’t get it right in Apple Valley. Misfits Collective, a mini food hall, didn’t quite work. Then it became Mezcalito Butcher. Pizzeria Social. Curiouser Coffee. A steak/fish house across the parking lot called Farmer and the Fishmonger. Concepts didn’t click, quality wasn’t high enough.
“At the beginning of 2024, I was frustrated, exhausted, and thought someone else could better lead this company, so I hired a CEO to replace me. I guess you could say I had lost my way,” Donatell told me.
But the guy who started a south metro restaurant group boasting an Eagan gas station with scratch-made food wasn’t giving up. He had built Farmer’s Grandson Eatery, Burgers and Bottles, Volstead House Whiskey Bar & Speakeasy, and Mean Miner’s Street Tacos in Eagan, Bourbon Butcher in Farmington, Tequila Butcher in Chanhassen, and Whiskey Inferno in Savage.
Today, Donatell is revisiting a food hall concept and refocusing the entire restaurant group, formerly called the Misfits Collective, now Wondrous Collective.
So what went wrong? “We were doing things detrimental to the quality of our food and beverage like batching cocktails, serving frozen fries, and even moved all of our bbq production to a centralized location. I hated it,” he said.
In a Facebook post, he wrote about straying from the origin: “We didn’t care about taking the easy route or following the crowd. From fresh-cut fries and hand-pattied burgers to slow-cooked prime rib, we were dedicated to being remarkable. Somewhere along the way, amidst the chaos of the pandemic, opening new restaurants, staffing shortages, and rising costs, we lost that spark. We made compromises that didn’t align with our vision.”
The just-opened Revolve Hall, Apple Valley’s first food hall, leads the transformation, and it relies on some of the concepts that have already proven successful. There’s a full-service Whiskey Inferno, and then four counter-service options: Curiouser Coffee, Square Cut Pizza, Mean Miner’s Tacos, and Ice Cold Tacos (ice cream dessert rolled tacos).
“Revolve Hall is more intuitive with all of the counter service concepts straight ahead when you walk in and the full service Whiskey Inferno behind a big wall with its own door,” he explained. The coffee concept is sort of an antidote to the Starbucks and Caribou movement towards drive-thrus and away from spots to hang. ” Taking advantage of the enormous space, it has a shared workspace vibe with guests sometimes hanging out for hours and reordering food and beverages multiple times,” Donatell told me.
Plus, across Wondrous Collective restaurants, they’re adding $8 happy hour Monday-Friday, 2:30 p.m.-5 p.m., and late-night happy hour with half-priced food and drink options from 9 p.m. until close.
Spending most of 2024 as a shareholder gave Donatell a good perch to see what was happening as his group expanded in size, in concepts, and in staffing. “I started paying attention to why I started opening restaurants in the first place – to give hospitality people a platform to express their creativity – and realized our Directors had taken away almost all of the creativity,” he said.
So he stepped back as CEO this fall with a plan to fix everything that was bothering him. “I’ve been back at it for a month or so now and insisting on quality, insisting on hiring people who want a creative outlet, unbatching cocktails, relighting the smokers at each restaurant, fresh cut fries, flame-grilled burgers, innovating menus, getting rid of service charges, dedicating resources to training and developing our people, and leading in a way that I am proud of,” he explained.
The South Metro has really been an underserved part of the Twin Cities when it comes to high-quality independent restaurants. We’re seeing growth in concepts like Southern Social and Kitchen & Rail, but Donatell has found success before, and we’re hoping he gets it right for Apple Valley.
Revolve Hall, 14889 Florence Trail, Apple Valley.
