31/05/2025
Let me tell you a little story. I’ll keep it short-ish - but it’s got heart, sweat, and a heavy-metal hallway in it.
Seven years ago, a team of nine opened the doors to what was, by all reasonable accounts, a wildly risky project. Just six months before, Nick and I had taken over four band rehearsal rooms in a beat-down building filled with metalheads, rave-throwers, and every kind of creative chaos. We were young, naive, and possessed by this intense, unshakable belief - that we could build something different. Something that mattered. Something that could bend the status quo just enough to let the light in.
We didn’t have much money. But we had a mission. And that mission drew in others - incredibly talented people who didn’t just believe in what we were building, they made it their own.
For seven years, we haven’t stopped believing.
Not once.
We don’t measure ourselves against other restaurants or chase trends. We measure against who we were yesterday - and how much closer we can get to what we know this place can be.
There hasn’t been a single day where it’s felt like the work was done - but also not a single day where the love for the work has run dry. That’s the part no one tells you: it’s exhausting, yes. But it’s also addicting. Joyful. Alive.
And when we look back - we don’t see a finish line. We see progress. Evolution. Growth. We see the kind of change that doesn’t shout, but accumulates - in the culture, in the benefits, in the way we hold space for our people, our guests, and the world we’re feeding from.
Beth - Nick’s mom - calls us “dreamers and schemers.” She’s not wrong.
We dream in wild shapes. We scheme with spreadsheets and fire and conviction. And we keep going - not because we’re chasing some perfect version of Alouette, but because we believe in the doing.
Seven years in, we are still becoming. And that’s the point.
Here’s to every single person who’s been part of the story so far - and to everyone who will be part of what comes next.
We’re just getting started.
Were you with us back in the early days?