When someone thinks of a garage, the word “pasta” may not be the first thing that springs to mind, but for Reinaldo Gonzalez and Lesme Romero, the owners of Lexington Pasta, “pasta” and “garage” go together like fettuccine and alfredo.
That’s because these two words form part of a new premise that they’re developing at their soon-to-open second location, the Pasta Garage Café on Delaware Avenue.
The new location, a 10,000-square-foot facility, will have a dine-in section that takes on the look and feel of a garage, with antique pasta-making equipment scattered about.
This is where customers can feast on various combinations of fresh pasta and sauce, take part in pasta classes, check out their new catering menu and purchase pasta to be cooked at home, in the midst of a decor reminiscent of an auto garage.
In addition to the Pasta Garage Café, Lexington Pasta will use the extra space for all of its production needs, with the original location on North Limestone remaining as a retail outlet and bodega-style market — a one-stop shop where customers can purchase pasta, sauce, bread, wine and a few other Kentucky Proud products.
Romero and Gonzalez are both from Venezuela. Both of their mothers are from Italy, and both of their fathers are from Spain. Those are all very big coincidences, especially when you consider the fact that they didn’t meet until they came to America to learn English and just happened to attend the same school — Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and later, Cleveland State University.
After discovering their shared backgrounds and cultural similarities, they started a close friendship and were roommates for all five years of their collegiate education, and they were even employed by the same Italian restaurant, working as cooks and making pasta from scratch. That’s where they first saw the big demand for fresh pasta.
After college, they each pursued occupations related to their respective majors; Gonzalez was an industrial engineer working for General Electric and Romero was in finance, having worked for both Merrill Lynch and Citigroup. During the 2008 recession, Romero, who was working in Tampa at the time, came up to Lexington to visit Gonzalez and his wife.
After a trip to the farmers market downtown, and during a sustained wave of nostalgia, they decided to use the produce they purchased to make a spinach pasta, just like the old days.
“As we were making pasta, I told [Gonzalez], ‘This is so much fun — I wish I could do this for a living,’” Romero said. “We really didn’t have any plan that night. We were just having fun making pasta.”
With their backgrounds in engineering and finance, they figured they could make it happen. Gonzalez’s wife suggested that, if they did start a company, they should call it Lexington Pasta. “That night, Lexington Pasta was born,” Romero said.
Initial business plans were limited to supplying pasta to restaurants and grocery stores. Plans for the retail outlet they have now, the pasta-making class, or the “Pasta in a Cup” they sell at farmers markets and festivals, were barely considered during the company’s conception.
“A lot of things have happened — there’s an element of serendipity in it,” Gonzalez said. “We see an opportunity and we take advantage of the opportunity and pursue it. When the business first started, the concept [was] not what it’s grown up to be.”
Lexington Pasta currently supplies about 50 restaurants throughout Lexington, Louisville and Cincinnati, and the short-term plan is to continue increasing that number. With the opening of the Pasta Garage Café, they have a new brand to market, and one of their long-term objectives is to analyze the feasibility of launching it into a nationwide franchise, which starts with opening multiple cafes throughout Lexington and Louisville.
Presently, Romero and Gonzalez are finalizing permits and renovations on the Delaware Avenue facility, with the hopes of opening up shop in eight weeks.
“We’ve been saying eight weeks for the last eight months,” Romero joked. On Aug. 15, they will launch a Kickstarter campaign to support the opening of their new location.
For entrepreneurs like Romero and Gonzalez, expanding their business isn’t only the next logical step; it’s something necessitated by an immense passion for their product.
“We always kind of think outside of the box,” said Romero. “It’s not what people tell us; it’s really about what we believe is best for the business.”