The University Dafly Kansan
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Teller's, located at 746 Massachusetts St., will change its name to Merchants Pub and Plate beginning Labor Day. The restaurant will also feature craft beers and an ambiance focused on Lawrence's college students. It will also no longer have its wood burning ovens.
GEORGE MULLINIX/KANSAN
Teller's adopts new name, style
BRETT PHILLIPPE
bphillippe@kansan.com
The art of fine dining is changing in Lawrence. Starting Labor Day, the once downtown restaurant mainstay Teller's will look a bit different to customers and will be under a new name — Merchants and Plate.
Owner Phil Wilson said the restaurant was in for a much-needed change.
"We identified the need for an upscale pub with really good, local sourced ingredients," Wilson said. "We wanted to do something that hadn't been done before."
The result was one of the biggest selections of beer on tap in Lawrence. With 30 beers on tap, the restaurant will be taking away all domestics and imports and turning the focus solely to craft beers.
Wilson said another reason for the change was the wood-burning ovens put structural stress on the building
and needed to be torn out.
and needed to be torn out. "Combine this, with the style change, a new name was definitely needed," Wilson said.
"We identified the need for an upscale pub with really good, local sourced ingredients."
PHIL WILSON
Owner
With craft beer being popular in the Midwest, Merchants will have the variety of craft beer for customer choosing and taste. By gathering beer from smaller breweries in the regions of Texas, Colorado, California, Oregon, Washington and Kansas, Wilson hopes Merchants embraces the long beer heritage that the area has and push it forward.
The ultimate goal of the change.
Wilson said, was to embrace the fact that Lawrence is a college town.
"For the longest time Tellers was a destination place, or just for special occasions, and one of the big things that we wanted to be a session bar." Wilson said.
Merchants will definitely fit the bill of the idea of being a college-style bar.
The restaurant will have two large TVs, two happy hours and one of the more interesting deals from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m.: the Four for Four. Wilson described the Four for Four as setting four beers for $4.
Come Labor Day, customers will get the chance to experience the new-look downtown restaurant and its extensive beer collection.
Edited by Dylan Lysen
Introducing all new interior design and dining concepts including: