The bar will have easy-drinking beers alongside batched cocktails (priced around $10) and a small selection of made-from-scratch cocktails (for around $13).
Marigold will open directly across Welton Street from Kudva’s 715 Club, but he’s not worried about the proximity. Opening on Welton was intentional, as he values the ability to make an impact in the neighborhood — and the two neighboring bars promise to be very different. Where the 715 Club is dark, with tiny windows and low lighting, Marigold will be flush with greenery.
Its rooftop deck, the only one on Welton, will be open to the elements and have plenty of planters. The bar will have a back patio with scattered seating among a garden and a large water feature. An entire wall of the bar will be covered in panels of different organic preserved moss, and the front windows will be lined with plants, all of which will be available for purchase.
Marigold's back patio will include a pollination habitat like this one at Gold Point, but with an "Asian flair."
Steve Smith Designs
“We want people to make drunken impulse buys,” says Spencer Foreman, Kudva’s marketing manager. Lauren Silver, the fiancée of one of the investors, is curating the window plants and intends to plan events, like a terrarium building and cocktails night.
“The quiet little sanctuary in the back will be a great contrast to Welton,” Kudva says. The bar will hold 45-50 people and have a few wall murals, which are in the works with artist Fa’al Ali of ILA Gallery.
Steve Smith Designs created and will install the patio and moss wall. Smith designed the patio at Gold Point, as well, which includes a pollinator habitat with native plants to support the local hummingbirds, butterflies and bees. Marigold’s yard will be similar but “more meditative, with an Asian flair,” says Smith, who adds that the focus will be on native plants with high pollination, like flowering plum trees, “which the bees and birds will love."
The water feature will be a huge boon to the local small wildlife, Smith notes, as bees, butterflies and hummingbirds have a hard time finding water sources in an urban environment. “I wish more people were doing this. Instead of stripping everything down, it’s better for us and for the animals and insects to have mixed use," he explains. "It’s the way it should be.”
Marigold's food options are still being finalized, but Kudva expects to have quick, easy-to-heat options like mac and cheese — “insta-hot food,” he says. He is also planning to chat with Josh Pollack who owns Famous Original J’s Pizza across the street, to see if they can arrange for a pizza option — one of the pizza shop’s serving windows already opens onto the 715 Club’s patio. “I plan on something, but we’re not adding a kitchen," he says.
Kudva notes that while COVID has been hard, his staff have stayed on board. The little turnover he saw was mostly the result of people moving away, and he just took all sixty-some of his employees to San Diego for a nearly all-expenses-paid three-day vacation. “We’ve made it through COVID, and hopefully it’s a fun place to work,” he says.
“I can attest to that,” interjects Savanna Phibbs, one of Marigold's investors and Gold Point’s manager.
Kudva also wants to empower his employees to own a business, which he jokes is because he’s hoping to retire soon. He shares ownership in each of his ventures, and Marigold is no different, though there is more employee buy-in. Six of Marigold's investors are employees at, or owners of, his other bars, including Phibbs and Foreman. Other Marigold investors include Colin Hankins, who is part owner of Gold Point; Johnny Mayer, who is the manager of Squire Lounge; and Corey Costello and Michael Reilly, both part owners of the 715 Club and Gold Point. Kudva’s friend Genevieve Shifrin is also investing in Marigold.
With so many cooks in the kitchen, you’d think decisions would be tough. But while the bar’s opening has been delayed, that’s because of city permitting and construction. Decision-making is smooth, says Kudva. The secret sauce is a commitment to each person’s opinion. If someone is strongly for or opposed to something, the group collectively agrees to honor those decisions.
Kudva and the investment crew hope to open Marigold in March, though the location is still in need of a lot of work. They have an indoor staircase to nowhere as they await the rooftop deck build, and a large dumpster in the back will have to be removed before the garden is installed. But the roots are set, and Marigold promises to be in bloom by the summer.
