Four consecutive slabs of white Italian marble. Custom-made neon signs designed by the noted Frank Norton.
A slick, wooden bar made completely out of Missouri black walnut and Osage white, milled within 100 miles of Springfield.
Six one-of-a-kind, tailor-made barstools from Chicago. A bathroom adorned in Gucci wallpaper. At least 100 bottles of liquor, many of them top-shelf.
At the center of it all stands a desk that has been in the heart of the Ozarks for more than a century.
To some it sounds like a dream-come-true cocktail lounge. Josh Widner simply calls it his office.
“The people that come in the front door, and I say this is my office, not a bar,” Widner said. “They're like, ‘Whatever.'”
In 12 years, Widner cobbled together eight businesses spanning two states. In Springfield, he has Cherry Picker Package x Fare, Sweet Boys Neighborhood Bar, Best of Luck Beer Hall and Golden Girl Rum Club. In Bentonville, Arkansas, Scotch & Soda has been operating since 2015. He's doubling down with two new ventures, Loveless Cocktail Club and Sweetie's Package x Fare.
For Widner, running all of his businesses has been a logistical nightmare.
“All of those places were just kind of run by me and my crew out of the offices at the locations, my car, my house, storage units,” Widner said in an interview at his new office. “You know, just crazy all-over-the-place type stuff.”
His latest completed venture, Good Spirits & Co., located at 1424 E. Cherry St. Ste. A, will provide a single house to run all his companies from, Widner said. The office space/cocktail lounge opened in September 2023. Good Spirits will act as a quasi-parent company to the rest of his ventures.
“This is the first time we’ve had a facility where we have a back-of-house where we can actually do stuff,” Widner said. “We can have meetings here. We can have training here. We do a lot of menu design and working out the kinks here. A lot of cool, creative stuff happens here.”
Though Widner declined to disclose a total financial investment for Good Spirits & Co.'s headquarters, it gives off the appearance that it certainly didn't come cheap.
“We spent some money here and it was all intentional,” Widner said. “Because it's my office we were able to design it from the ground up. There's not a single piece of this place that I didn't touch or design myself.”
Pop-ups and industry get-togethers
Widner doesn't just use the beautiful space for meetings. Once a month, Good Spirits hosts a pop-up cocktail hour.
“When we're done using [headquarters] for ourselves, we love opening it up to the community,” Widner said.
The once-a-month events feature different cocktails every time. In February, the pop-up featured a Stone Fruit Gin and Tonic and an Espresso Martini, complete with ethic cold brew, a chicory coffee liqueur and xila Mexican aperitif. There was the Cassis Me Quick, with Midwest gin, cassis, sage, coconut cardamom, lemon, cream and egg white.
Customers got to taste creations like the Batanga-Rang, with Blanco tequila, fernet branca and sangria senorial. There was also the the Saltburn Bathwater No. 2, complete with Indigo gin, maraschino liqueur, almond orgeat, orange liqueur, lemon, sparkling wine and salt.
The next pop-up is March 15-16. You can book a spot at a table or at the bar, for any size of group you want, on Good Spirits' website. The events are free to attend and the cocktails are priced accordingly, Widner said.
“Walk-ins are welcome, so you don't have to have a reservation to come here, by any means,” Widner said. “People walk in off the street all the time.”
Good Spirits & Co. also hosts industry tastings at its headquarters. Anyone working in the restaurant and hospitality industry are welcome to join for free. The company is aiming to host one a month, Widner said.
“We want to do those on a monthly basis because it helps our community grow,” Widner said. “It helps our hospitality grow. It helps the education. It’s not just a win for our program, but really the city as a whole.”
The space is available to rent for private parties as well, Widner said. Seating for 30 is available, as well one or two bartenders, depending on the size of the party.
“We have people renting the space out for project proposals and fundraising and birthdays and wedding stuff,” Widner said.
New Bentonville, Arkansas ventures
While headquarters is the latest project for Widner in Springfield, he's had his sights on Bentonville, Arkansas, for new business ventures for almost a decade. And it's finally paying off.
“The projects that I've been focused on for the past little bit and my next year are all in Bentonville,” Widner said.
Loveless Cocktail Club will open by the end of the summer, Widner said. It's a wild concept called a listening lounge, where the music and mood is curated on an hourly basis.
A listening lounge “is a bar-concept that's popular in Japan, where the auditory experience is just as important as the food and beverage and hospitality experience,” Widner said. “It's a cocktail bar set up with a really awesome vinyl audio system.”
Loveless's digs are impressive. The whole building is made of brick and steel and was designed by Hufft, a popular architecture firm based in Kansas City, Widner said.
“It's as nice of a project as you can ever imagine,” Widner said. “It's got a huge thoroughfare that goes down the middle of it that looks like this cool Tokyo-streetscape type-of-thing.”
Construction on Loveless has yet to begin, but it will be built in downtown Bentonville next to the water tower that overlooks the city, Widner said. It's housed in a building being built by the Waltons — of Sam Walton family and Walmart fame.
Widner isn't stopping with Loveless. He's also opening Sweetie's Package x Fare, but no timeline has been established for when it will open. Sweetie's is a similar concept to the Springfield-staple Cherry Picker Package x Fare, located at 601 S. Pickwick Ave., except it's offerings will be more tailored to the Bentonville customer base.
“It’s going to have vegan soft-serve in it as well and a coffee program,” Widner said.
On top of ice cream and coffee, Sweetie's will also offer natural and sparkling wine, as well as ready-to-go sandwiches.
“So it’s kind of like Cherry Picker as in its a kind of a neighborhood-bodega open all day, but the offerings are a little bit different, tailored to the Bentonville market,” Widner said.
It will also be located in downtown Bentonville, with the Momentary, a popular contemporary art space, located right down the road, Widner said. It will also be housed in a Walton-built building.
Loose Goose update
Good Spirits is a hospitality partner in the Loose Goose development at the southwest corner of Grand Street’s intersection with Grant Avenue. Investors in GDL Enterprises, the developer of Loose Goose, include Andrew Doolittle, Willie Grega and Cameron LaBarr. Michelle Billionis, a partner in the Coffee Ethic, is also a hospitality partner.
The Loose Goose was introduced in 2022 as a mixed use concept with a coffee shop with indoor seating and drive-thru window, a food truck parking area with seating, yard-games, pickleball courts, an outdoor “walk-up yard bar,” package liquor sales and off-street parking.
GDL recently purchased the building to the south of the development, which previously housed the Grant Avenue Pet Hospital, and is reanalyzing plans for the development, according to an email sent from Doolittle.
“Loose Goose is kind of unfortunately at a pause,” Widner said. “It had some cool momentum and we got to a good spot with the city.”
The plan could include multiple buildings with pickleball courts integrated into the larger concept, Widner said. The timeline for completing Loose Goose is still up in the air, Doolittle said in the email.
“We don’t currently have a timeline, but would hope to begin the project soon after the Grant Avenue Parkway public project is completed,” Doolittle wrote in the email.
The first sections of the Grant Avenue Parkway roadway improvements are underway and will continue throughout 2024, according to the project’s website.
The Grant Avenue Parkway project is a plan to create an off-street pedestrian and bicycle pathway along Grant Avenue from Sunshine Street to College Street in Downtown Springfield. It is funded through a $20 million federal grant with a $5 million local match.
“We look forward to working with Good Spirits throughout the entire process,” Doolittle wrote in the email.
Bettering the vibe in downtown Springfield
With the bulk of his Springfield businesses in or close to downtown, Widner is staunch believer — and investor — in Springfield's oldest corridor. While he sits on the board of the Downtown Springfield Association (DSA), he says he's not a fan of the feel of downtown in the last 5 years.
“I still feel like downtown seems to be in a weird place at the moment,” Widner said. “The vacancies have really taken their toll. The vagrants have really taken their toll.”
Widner also believes commercial rent has become too high in downtown Springfield, making it so retail stores can't exist. What's left is a food-and-beverage hub with some office space, Widner said.
“Everybody wants downtown to be badass,” Widner said. “There's a whole discussion that needs to happen with DSA, the [Community Improvement District] and all the people downtown to figure out how we can bring it back.”
That doesn't mean Widner has soured to Springfield, by any means. He's constantly looking for new opportunities.
“I still love Commercial [Street], I still love Galloway,” Widner said. “I think those are the two places that excite me right now.”
While his latest ventures will focus on developing Bentonville, Widner said Springfield will always be home.
“Springfield has my heart, and it always will,” Widner said. “All we can do is continue to do our brands, our concepts, and hope that it helps inspire.”
