Over the last six years, the steady rise of Two Tides Brewing Co. has been both beautiful and bountiful.
What began as a homebrew hobby for James Massey during his college years blossomed into a beer business that now dominates the southernmost block of De Soto Avenue. On both sides of the street are the brand’s offices and operations. The original bar takes up the entire second floor of the 1930s post-Victorian Frankensteined property with beer brews and Float Coffee up top, Smol Bar below, and Crispi burgers cooking up around the corner.
High Tides, indeed, with another one about to roll in when James and Liz Massey open up The Laundry Diner, their realization of a midcentury modern eatery that will soon serve our collective favorites.
“We are aiming for September,” Liz Massey said confidently. “That’s the goal. It’s good to set goals.”
“There’ve been a few hurdles that have come up that might push us a little past that,” she continued, “but it’s good to have something to motivate you.”
A few months back, Brian Fiasconaro (The Grey, Husk) came onboard as executive chef and has since been developing the Masseys’ desired concept into an all-day menu of Southern-styled classics.
“There are some really great diners in town, but none that quite fit that niche for me,” Liz Massey said, which is just one of the reasons they picked the property on the corner of Paulsen and East Anderson Streets, where an exhaustive restoration will culminate in a throwback restaurant.
As far as she knows, no business had been in the building since Rogers Laundry & Dry Cleaning Co. pressed its last suit, even though the vintage sign vertically bearing simply the word ‘LAUNDRY’ is still there.
“Over the years, we’ve tried calling it all sorts of things,” Massey said about naming the restaurant, but everyone involved with the project kept ad hoc calling it “The Laundry.”
Like heavy starch, the name stuck.
“Everyone was going to call it that anyway,” she said with a smile.
LOGICAL EXPANSION WITH AN EATERY
“The goal has always been to keep as much of our beer sold where it is made because that is money in our team’s pocket,” Liz Massey explained.
Massey, who belongs to the Georgia Craft Brewers Guild, said that the state’s beer laws are “crazy-strict,” meaning that selling to a distributor significantly cuts Two Tides’ profit margin, as opposed to selling it out of their own tap room, which ultimately means “less money for [their] staff.”
For more than two years, the couple “toyed around with” opening another location, looking at properties downtown, in Bluffton, and in Atlanta, while trying to compute the work-life balance costs.
When going further afield simply did not make sense, they pivoted, and by the end of 2021, she had a localized business plan.
“The craft beer market is very saturated,” Massey said. “It became apparent that it wasn’t a smart business decision to open only another brewery. It should have a food component.”
Also, because the couple are manufacturers in the eyes of Georgia Law, they have to “stay in their tier,” she explained: the only alcohol their diner can sell is their own brand’s beer, which means that The Laundry is really being billed as an American diner that has Two Tides.
“It has definitely changed a little bit from that initial idea of just wanting to sell more beer because food is at the forefront of this place,” Massey said.
“I love diners,” she continued. “It’s my favorite place to go. I’m a night owl. I like being able to get out of the house and just perch somewhere and read and get some work done.”
“It’s always been in the back of my mind, and I thought it would do really well here,” Massey added.
One corollary benefit of opening their own casual all-day eatery was an additional employment outlet under the Two Tides umbrella for the Crispi and upstairs bar crews; moreover, another outpost could mean shared food costs and resources.
If they could only find the right property for the right price …
THIS MUST BE THE PLACE
Initially, the restaurant was supposed to be called Starland Diner, established someplace near Two Tides’ command center, but nothing in the neighborhood fit their budget.
Calling herself a “property nerd,” Massey turned to looking up area addresses to see their histories and property records. Unable to find any buildings that were actually listed for sale, she went real estate grassroots: any place she drove by that had a sign, she made a call, which led to exploring Google Maps to find “buildings that people aren’t utilizing the way [she thought] they should be utilized.”
“It was, literally, buildings I never saw anyone going in or out of, just rundown derelict spaces,” she recalled.
Starting in 2022, Massey wrote letters to owners of such spaces, inquiring about buying or leasing, and though she surfed the online property records of 1401 Paulsen Street, she did not write its owner, Michael Condon (Vintage Home Restoration), at that time.
“I’ve loved that building since I moved here,” Massey shared. “Way back in the early Instagram days, I was scrolling back, and I even randomly posted a photo of that building.”
She contacted realtor Chelsea Phillips and asked her about available spaces and contacts, and Condon reached out to Massey not long after.
“He loves that building as much as I do,” she continued. “It’s been abandoned as long as I’ve known it, but [Condon] has fixed it up to an extent.”
Over the years, plenty of possible lessees have drawn up plans for potential projects in that property, but Massey surmised that the amount of work required to restore the building properly scared off folks, which tracks because it was used in the filming of Halloween Ends.
“It is a very cool building, but it was a pile of bricks with a roof on it,” she said.
“Looking back, maybe I should have been more scared because it has taken me so long to get the building open,” Massey added with another smile, “but it has been a learning experience.”
SPIN CYCLE IN A HISTORIC SPACE
The Masseys publicly and socially announced The Laundry in late November of 2022 and signed the lease in 2023 after she had “made it through” Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission and City Council meetings to change the property’s zoning and to apply for parking variances.
“It’s all been a learning process,” Liz Massey said graciously. “I have learned to be more assertive and also just to not wait around.”
Patience truly is a virtue: not until February of this year was ground
finally broken, ushering in a full-scale reclamation of the roughly 3000-square foot site, a little less now because the design called for “cutting out” part of the former second floor to create a balcony that overlooks the main space.
Forest City Contracting, who also did much of the work at Two Tides, has overseen all of the major trades, and Boyce’s Handyman Services has handled the woodwork, millwork, and bars, “touching almost everything in that project, too,” Massey said.
Downstairs, diners will sit in differently sized booths and atop counter stools at a pumpkin-tooth bar, while upstairs will have its own bar and offer “cozier seating” with full food service.
Massey called the design work a “collaborative process,” principally citing her partnership with Christine Van Duyn, who chairs both the Interior Design and Preservation Design departments at SCAD. The two met and became friends while Massey was behind the bar at Two Tides.
One day, she told Van Duyn that she was “starting a big-girl project,” something that was much more than “just moving into this house” and “James and I building this bar.” There was “too much on the line,” said Massey, to build a bar that ended up being the wrong size or in the wrong place or whose overhang did not afford enough knee room.
“So inspired by anything mid-century modern,” Massey prepared mood boards filled with french toast browns, mustard yellows, olive greens, and wood paneling, and Van Duyn has “really been helping [her] bridge the gaps,” procuring the right elements, fittings, and fixtures that fit their budget.
No 1950s patriotic color scheme or roller skating servers, this will be what Massey called a “Waffle House with more finesse,” your favorite road-trip diner.
“That feeling when you’re looking through old family photos,” suggested the Austin native who came to Savannah in 2013 to study advertising at SCAD, “that’s the mood that I’m going for in this space.”
MEATLOAF, MILKSHAKES, AND MORE
Even though the physical space is not yet finished, the menu is ready to go, thanks to Fiasconaro’s experienced input.
“My menu was scary big,” Massey admitted, “and he helped pare it down and make it more cohesive.”
The Laundry will serve its own version of an all-star breakfast. You will be able to order steak and eggs. Lunch and dinner items will be available at 7 a.m., for folks getting off the night shift, as well as sandwiches fit for both morning and noontime.
The chicken fried chicken and meatloaf dinner promise to be staple platters, and disco fries, fried pickles, and hush puppies will remind you that you are sitting in a new-age Southern diner.
“If you just want to come in and get two eggs and toast, you can do that, too,” said Massey.
And yes, milkshakes are on the docket, and a pastry chef is soon to be hired who will “develop some tried-and-true classics.”
Though Massey said it has been, due to the two properties’ relative proximity and corner presences, The Laundry Diner is not to be confused with the East Side Theater Project, which is one of the pending endeavors of the Rhino Hospitality Group. Nevertheless, both restorations will be two more beams in the food-and-beverage bridge between the neighborhoods directly south of Forsyth Park and those that back up to the Truman.
“Overall, we try to create these spaces that are places we ourselves want to go to,” Massey said.
Luckily, where they want to go, we want to be, too, so I will see you in September at The Laundry Diner. I will be the guy with the vanilla shake.
The Laundry Diner (1401 Paulsen Street) will soon be open Sunday through Thursday (7 a.m. to 10 p.m.) and Friday and Saturday (7 a.m. to 2 a.m.)