How an Old Barn Transformed One Town's Food Scene
Opening a restaurant and market in a 19th-century barn is fitting for a husband and wife team with a jam-making business called Preservation.
And while turning Preservation into an act of, well, preservation wasn’t intentional, for Melanie and Toby Miles, it worked out perfectly. Their venture, Rail Epicurean Market in Westfield, Indiana, has been a foodie haven since 2014—and it’s helped revolutionize the city’s downtown district.
After years of working in the restaurant industry, the Mileses began dreaming about their own place—somewhere to continue making their jams, jellies, and preserves, and, perhaps, to branch out into new territory.
Staying local was important to them. “We love this town,” Toby Miles, age 30, says of Westfield, located 20 miles north of Indianapolis. “And we thought, ‘Let’s bring something new here.’”
The challenge was finding the right space. “We like our food and beer and cocktails and wine, but that kind of thing wasn’t happening here,” Toby says. “We were tired of having to leave Westfield to find something good to eat.”
photo by: Rail Epicurean Market
The barn was built circa 1890 as part of a lumber mill.
Then one day in 2013, Melanie Miles noticed a man working on the exterior of a long-vacant barn on Park Street, near downtown. She asked him what his plans were. That man, Robert Beauchamp, said he had nothing concrete in mind. So she made a pitch: How about turning the barn into a restaurant?
His answer was a firm no. But they exchanged information before parting ways. And Melanie, unable to get the barn out of her head, called him back. Eventually Beauchamp agreed to meet with her and Toby.
“We put together a game plan to convince him to do this insane project to put a restaurant where a restaurant doesn’t necessarily belong,” Toby says. “But a month later we were signing a lease.”
Then the work began.
Originally part of a lumber mill, the barn has served many functions over the last 110-plus years: a dairy barn, an ice cream store, a bait shop, a bike repair store.
“When we first looked at it, we were waist-deep in bike parts,” Toby says.
photo by: Tom Britt/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Rail Epicurean Market opened on April 1, 2014.
By that point, the building had fallen to deep disrepair, with warped boards and wildlife occupying the second floor. “But the barn, itself, had great bone structure,” Toby says. “So we just had to add onto it, straighten it out, and make it habitable.”
He adds, “We started with one extension cord that ran from the place next store. And now there’s plumbing, heating, air conditioning, new electrical systems, bathrooms, everything.”
photo by: Rail Epicurean Market
What started as a small market and a place to serve lunch expanded to serve dinner, wine, and beer as well.
photo by: Rail Epicurean Market
The menu at Rail Epicurean Market changes regularly, depending on what's in season.
photo by: Rail Epicurean Market
The wine and beer menu.
Many original architectural features—like the doors, windows, and wooden support beams—are still intact. Other features have been repurposed. For example, parts of the roof and siding that couldn’t be saved were turned into interior trim work, countertops, and server stations.
Other old touches come from someplace else entirely—like the downstairs countertops, which are made of salvaged flooring from a bowling alley in nearby Warsaw, Indiana, and the light fixtures, which come from a barn in Wisconsin.
photo by: Tom Britt/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The small market area sells gourmet goods from Indiana-based businesses.
photo by: Tom Britt/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Vendors include B. Happy Peanut Butter, based in Zionsville, Indiana (above) and Sage's Simple Syrups based in Whitesville, Indiana (left).
Rail Epicurean Market opened in April 2014, serving lunch and selling locally sourced grocery items—think honey, peanut butter, cheese, hummus, coffee. (The name comes from an old rail line that ran behind the barn; that rail line is now a trail.) Most everything served and sold comes from Indiana. Eventually, the market expanded to serve dinner, along with wine and beer.
photo by: Rail Epicurean Market
The second-floor dining area.
photo by: Rail Epicurean Market
The second-floor bar.
And a year after opening, the Mileses expanded into the barn’s second floor, with another bar and more seating. (The barn’s third floor is the Mileses’ office: “Best office in Westfield,” Toby says.) And the outdoor patio, remodeled in the spring of 2016, stays packed during the warm-weather months.
The restaurant’s success has trickled beyond its barn doors. In the years since Rail Epicurean Market opened, several other restaurants and businesses have opened in older, underused buildings near downtown.
photo by: Rail Epicurean Market
Melanie and Toby Miles, with their son, Redding.
“Now there’s this pocket of independently-owned businesses using structures that are already there,” Toby says. “They’re using these older buildings so they don’t get torn down.”
Neither the restaurant nor the city’s growth was on the Mileses’ mind back when they first started scheming about putting a kitchen inside that old Park Street barn.
“We never would have pictured this three years ago,” Miles says. “We just wanted a place where we could make sandwiches and jam. And now we’re doing all kinds of stuff—stuff we never would have dreamed of doing.”
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