Small Business Spotlight: A Conversation with the Church Street Family
What began as a single wine shop, born out of a desire to recreate the ambiance of a California wine bar, has grown into a collection of nine distinctive restaurants and bars. Husband and wife team Matt Mell and Stephanie Kennedy-Mell are the creative culinary geniuses behind the Church Street Family restaurants and bars, which today provide some of the most unique dining experiences in Huntsville.
After flourishing careers in New York and California – he in construction, she in fashion – the couple had the opportunity to leave California and go anywhere they wanted. They chose Alabama and Huntsville as their new home. It was a homecoming for Matt, who is originally from Scottsboro.
But the motivation to make the Rocket City home came from Stephanie.
“I lived in three of the largest cities in the country,” Stephanie said, referring to time spent in Manhattan, Miami and Los Angeles. “Although they do have a lot to offer, the allure is not the same as small town America where it’s community driven and I can go walk down the street and I can go sit in the park.”
Huntsville had a lot to offer, but what it didn’t have was a cozy wine bar like they were accustomed to in California.
“You could go to a restaurant and get a great glass of wine, but they really wanted you to eat and they wanted you to leave,” Stephanie said. “There was no place where you could just kind of lay back and say, ‘What’s going on with your day?’ and have a glass of wine.”
So they decided to create their own. In 2014, they opened Church Street Wine Shoppe at 501 Church Street in a space adjacent to The Eaves restaurant. The wine shop offered tastings and sold wine by the glass or the bottle, which paired great with customers who were having dinner at The Eaves.
As downtown Huntsville continued to develop and grow, the Mells had the opportunity to open the restaurant Purveyor in 2017.
“Originally it was going to be a bourbon bar, and we found out so quickly how important food was. We decided that we’re going to do food instead and make it a restaurant that’s bourbon-centric,” Stephanie explained. “Purveyor means someone who supplies things of the highest quality, and that was our goal.”
First a wine shop and then a restaurant. But the Mells didn’t stop there. Over the next six years they would create seven additional restaurant concepts, all of them unique to Huntsville, unique from each other, and uniquely captivating.
“We’re really good at creating immersive experiences, I think, so when you step into any one of our restaurants you really feel like you’re transported to wherever it is I was looking to take you,” Stephanie said.
After Purveyor came Pourhouse rooftop bar and Mazzara’s fast casual Italian, both at the then-new Stovehouse development. Quickly, however, they realized “fast casual” wasn’t the right speed for Mazzara’s.
“We’re really good at customer service, and fast casual does not lend itself well to customer service,” Stephanie recalled. “People didn’t want to eat our food out of to-go containers at picnic tables.”
So they put Mazzara’s on hold for a bit until they could find a space where people could sit down and enjoy an Italian meal together and started working on Sea Salt Urban Oyster Bar. Initially a self-serve brewery called “Corner Pour,” Stephanie said they learned quickly that people didn’t want to pour their own beer. So they repurposed the space into an urban oyster bar.
“I always say there’s no ego in business,” Stephanie said. “At the end of the day you’re running a business, so it’s about numbers and what’s working, what the community wants and listening to what the people want.”
Then came Catacomb 435, a swanky underground, reservation-only speakeasy featuring craft cocktails. Stephanie described Catacomb 435 as one of the most immersive experiences she’s created to date.
“The design aspect is unearthed,” she said. “I wanted it to feel like I broke a hole in the wall and found this bar. You’re having this amazing cocktail, in this space that’s from the 1800s, in an antique glass, and it really sets a tone for a really cool vibe, like time travel.”
After being on pause for a bit, Mazzara’s came back to life in 2021 in the historic Humphreys-Rodgers House. Named for Stephanie’s grandparents, Mazzara’s menu is all family recipes.
“When we first opened (Mazzara’s) we didn’t have meatballs on the menu, and the managers asked for meatballs over and over. So I called my mom, I was like, ‘Got any meatball recipes?’ She texted it over, I printed it out, went to the kitchen and we had meatballs the next day.”
In 2022, ChurchStreet ventured out of downtown Huntsville, opening a second Church Street Wine Shoppe in Providence and expanding their wine club to more than 600 members. They added three more restaurant concepts to their repertoire in 2023: The Library Piano Bar, ChurchStreet Test Kitchen at the Orion Amphitheater and Li’l Mazzara’s in downtown Athens.
All of the ChurchStreet Family restaurants have been an opportunity for Stephanie to blend her art background with her passion for providing creative culinary experiences.
“Our experience of being immersed while you’re eating and taking you on that journey comes down to three things at ChurchStreet Family restaurants: Amazing service, amazing food, amazing atmosphere and how each one of those complements or helps the other,” Stephanie shared.
The ideas for what kind of restaurant concepts to explore, she said, come down to paying attention to what’s missing and creating spaces to fill those voids. Stephanie said she builds restaurants and bars that she herself wants to go to.
Matt and Stephanie were named Best Restaurateurs of the Year for the State of Alabama in 2023. Other notable accolades of late include Mazzara’s for Best Italian Restaurant, by Southern Living Magazine; Catacomb for Best Bartender, by Alabama Magazine; and ChurchStreet Wine Shoppe is consistently named one of the top 8 wine bars in Alabama, by Best Things Alabama.
The success of the ChurchStreet brand is a team effort, Stephanie said, and part of a healthy culture that they intentionally cultivate and promote from within.
“I try to find people who have passion and are positive, and I’ll teach the rest because I can’t teach (passion). Either you are or you aren’t. If they want to grow, if they want to learn, ChurchStreet family is definitely the place for them because we are cultivators of people.”
For more information about all of the ChurchStreet Family restaurants, including hours and menus, go to churchstreetfamily.com.