With just 400 square feet, there isn’t a lot of space in The Lunchbox, a small restaurant in the Bo Diddley Community Plaza.
It’s the size of an average two-car garage, but there’s just enough room for a refrigerator, a range stove, counter space for assembling dishes and limited kitchen basics.
Space is so tight that extra ingredients are kept in a storage unit a mile away, and the restaurant only offers outside seating under dark orange umbrellas and an overhead wooden trellis.
“I can’t even imagine what we would do if you gave us an extra 100 square feet,” co-owner Clea Lauriault said. “We probably wouldn’t be able to handle the spaciousness.”
She said the narrow space forces the business to stay organized.
The restaurant, which opened this spring, occupies the historic Bethel Station Building in the downtown Bo Diddley Community Plaza.
Built in 1925, the building originally functioned as a car service station. In 2009, Lauriault and her business partner, Robyn Mole, won the property through the Gainesville Community Redevelopment Agency, a public group that seeks to foster urban and residential rebuilding.
The Lunchbox offers breakfast, lunch and dinner, and its menu features sandwiches, tacos, braised beef short ribs on baguettes and tofu rice bowls as permanent menu items. Specials, such as corn dogs fried in duck fat and banana beignets, rotate based on ingredient availability.
Tate Clair, who calls himself a “fine-dining chef turned sandwich maker,” helped design the restaurant’s menu. He said the goal is to keep the food “clean and simple.”
“You use good ingredients, and you don’t lose the integrity,” he said.
Clair has worked in the food industry across the world, from Australia to Boston. His experience in upscale restaurants inspires the food he creates for The Lunchbox.
“It’s about taking the techniques of a skilled chef and simplifying them into a sandwich,” he said.
For Clair, working in a casual sandwich shop has been a liberating experience.
“This is a blast,” he said. “There are no stressed-out waitresses, no people complaining at table number 12. You don’t have to worry about pleasing every request of a customer who’s dropping [$700] on a meal.”
Clair said that on an average day, he serves meals to about 120 people, with many more patrons purchasing drinks and snacks.
Friday nights, when the city hosts free concerts on the plaza, the restaurant serves upwards of 450 meals.
The free concert series that began in May is set to end Friday, but The Lunchbox is optimistic that its business will continue to thrive.
Lauriault said other downtown events, such as November’s Downtown Festival and Art Show, will help fill the void once the concert series ends.
She also said The Lunchbox has a following of regular customers who frequent the café on a daily basis.
UF senior anthropology major Josey Heston said she finds herself craving the restaurant’s pulled pork sandwiches.
“This is different than any other restaurant I’ve been to,” she said. “It’s really fresh and completely unique.”
