Bar None, a new concept in non-alcohol sports bars featuring "mocktails", smoothies and sodas will succeed Annette's City Cafe on Old Vine Street with an opening targeted for mid-September.
Annette Jett and husband Frank Bickle are relocating their catering headquarters to the Signature Club in Landsdowne where they recently opened their beach-themed 'Franky & Annette's' restaurant. "Part of the neighborhood zoning regulation was that in order to cater from that zone, you have to be attached to a restaurant. We didn't know about this until after we signed the lease (on Old Vine.) So I've joked with people that we kind of became the accidental restaurant," Jett said.
In addition to a busy catering business, Annette was already operating a cafe in the Central Bank building on Vine Street and with the new venue in Landsdowne she and Bickle, parents of two young children, came to the decision to streamline their operations into something more manageable. "But from this has come some great opportunities," she said. "Had we not opened the restaurant (on Old Vine) then we never would have come up with Franky & Annette's. So, things happen for a reason."
Jett emphasized that her catering business remains the same with the same full staff and telephone number. "We now won't have to also staff two restaurants, as well," she noted with great relief.
Jett and Bickle have more than two years remaining on the lease of the Old Vine Street location. So it was important that they were comfortable with the business that would sublease.
John Sims, a 17-year veteran of The Blue Moon nightclub on Euclid in the Chevy Chase neighborhood where he served as DJ, is opening the new Bar None concept in partnership with Roger Fields, president of Kidz Blitz Ministries and creator of the Christian music family event, Kidz Blitz Live.
"We feel there's a void in Lexington for a lot of people who want to go to a full-scale, hybrid of something like Drake's and a nightclub feel with ambient lighting and that kind of thing; a cool place for all ages to go basically with everything that a secular sports bar or lounge would have without the alcohol," Sims said.
"We'll have all the eye candy. Instead of a back bar full of liquor bottles you'll see Jones sodas and ginger beers and root beers. It'll have that edgy feel of a bar without the alcohol. If you want to get a draft beer, you can get the root beer served in a glass mug. We'll have what they call 'mocktails' - virgin daiquiris and things like that," he added.
Sims said he hopes to attract UK sports fans as well as fans "of the good Christian music that's out there, the gospel stuff that we grew up on."
Sims' target date for opening is Sept. 19, the same evening Franky's & Annette's will host a "Big Blue Beach Blast" following the UK-UL game, a fundraiser featuring Conch Republic on behalf of children's special needs programs in the Bluegrass.