Jay Bayer: Saison and Bingo

When Jay Bayer entered the Richmond dining scene as a bartender
in the mid-2000s, he started to get very excited about beer, but
at that time, the options in Richmond were limited.


"I was actually working at Galaxy Diner, fresh out of college.
And then left there went to Capitol Ale House," Bayer said about
his entrance into Richmond dine. "Beer was my first true love.
The thing that I knew in an epicurean zone that I really wanted
to explore."


So he packed up and moved to Chicago in 2008 to attend the Siebel
Institute's brewing academy.


When he returned to Richmond, the microbrewery scene had not yet
taken off, so Bayer adjusted his plan.


"I went back into tending bar at Ale House. I was there for a
while when I met my first business partner Adam Hall. He and I
started homebrewing together, doing dinners together, and really
formed the ideas around what Saison would end up being."


Nearly a decade later, Saison, on Marshall Street, remains
one of Richmond's favorite places to eat and drink.


"We thought we were opening a beer bar in a neighborhood. But as
soon as the quality of the drinks that were being put out from
behind the bar connected with a handful of people, and word
started spreading, we immediately were like, 'alright, we are now
a cocktail bar that serves really interesting beers and a fun
wine list.'"


Saison was among the restaurants that created some of the buzz
that helped turn Richmond into a foodie town filled
with can't miss dining options.


"You could just really see how much the city was really craving
so much at that point [in 2012]," he recalled. "It felt like the
rumbling inside the volcano was building up steam. And then it
was just waiting for that moment to really go."


The eruption of Saison [and Saison Market] was helped by a Food
Network star's appreciation of the market's chicken biscuit.


"We have a policy to not be too fanboy around famous people
whether actors, musicians, food personalities, but everybody just
barely contained themselves freaking out when Alton Brown
came in," Bayer said. "So he came in and takes a picture of
himself where he's got like a little bit of biscuit crumb on his
little five o'clock shadow beard and like a cheek full of chicken
and biscuit."


That photo, later posted on social media, was Saison's first
viral moment, Bayer said.


"All of a sudden, my phone just starts going wild," he laughed.
"The success of the chicken biscuit built a name for Saison
Market. That place developed because we noticed there wasn't a
nice wine and beer market in the neighborhood. We had all this
wine and beer that was in the basement that we were using to sell
at Saison. So we just put some shelves up and see if we can make
something out of this and then the chicken biscuit really, really
took that off."


Building off his Saison success, Bayer helped build Bingo.


The large brewery-restaurant-video game space on Broad Street
near Arthur Ashe Boulevard was born after a chance meeting at a
Richmond bar.


"A First Friday evening, Quirk had just opened and Ted and Katie
Ukrop were hanging out at the bar. Ted and I just started
chatting. He was mentioning how happy he was to have the Quirk
open downtown, how much he loved downtown, how important it was
to him as a kid," Bayer said. "He was just very thankful for what
Saison had shown and how kind of how much easier it made talking
to the folks about we can do so much more with Broad Street. This
is a thriving and vibrant part of the city. So he and I started a
conversation, like what do you what would you want to do next?"


Bayer fell back to his beer roots and Bingo Beer Co. was born.


"[We] wanted to bring the culinary side, the bar side, and gaming
and fun into a space, a large space for having fun," he said.
"Ted actually discovered this space from friends of his. It was
clearly a space that had not been kept up in any way since its
most recent iteration as a bingo hall. But you can still tell
just from the size of it, space of it, and the location kind of
trajectory of where Scott's Addition was headed that it was like
a really great opportunity to be right here on Broad."


Hear more about what Jay Bayer brings to his Richmond restaurants
on this week's Eat It, Virginia podcast.


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