Makayla Hardy spoke with the owner and executive chef at Mellow Fellow to talk about some changes.

Tomorrow is the first home game for the Reno Aces this season. Nearby businesses, like Mellow Fellow Gastropub, are expecting some large crowds on game days.

With Mellow Fellow located right across the street from Greater Nevada Field, they typically get a lot of people coming in for a quick bite before and after the games.

Ryan Eller, owner of Mellow Fellow, says, "Even though the weather doesn't look so great, I think we probably expect a good turnout. No matter what, people get excited for the first week of games. You know coming back; it's been five, six months and we definitely have a lot of big baseball fans in Reno."

Eller says he also increases staff and does more training, but most of the work goes into preparing food.

"I mean we go from doing probably 50 covers at dinner to 150 covers in an hour."

He tells us they'll get really busy right before the game; however, it quickly slows down during the games making it challenging for staff to continue to make money.

"That's actually one of the challenges for us is how do we get people to come in once the game starts," says Eller, "because everybody who was here for the game is obviously in there." 

Eller says they're introducing some new menu items this season - one of them being a partnership with Brew Dog.

"We'll be featuring ten beers from Brew Dog throughout the entire baseball season. That'll rotate coming from their Las Vegas brewery, where they send us some special stuff and we'll have a good selection going all the time," says Eller.

Mellow Fellow has also recently opened their new ghost kitchen called "Mac Daddy's," which only serves mac-n-cheese entrees through DoorDash and Uber Eats. They say this specific food focus allows them to stick out from other competitors.

Eller says, "Everybody who's spending a lot of money to put their burgers at the top of the list or chicken sandwiches at the tops of the list. So, the ghost kitchen concept really gives us an additional brand that we can use to reach customers on a more specific basis."

Mac Daddy's is offering 14 different types of mac-n-cheese entrees.

Jason Dunmyer, executive chef of Mellow Fellow Gastropub, says, "The idea was to take different concepts, different types of food, and how we can translate that into mac-n-cheese. We have everything. We have like a French Onion mac-n-cheese; we have a Yellowstone which is like a chili mac."

Mellow Fellow will be serving four of these mac-n-cheese entrees on their normal menu for dine-in.

Tags