Ingle Eats is passing the baton to a new owner—and he’s a familiar face in the local restaurant industry. Founders Joan Chastain and Shannon Countryman built the beloved gourmet meal pick-up and delivery service almost 13 years ago. Now, local restaurateur Chase Lyons will steer the ship.
In an Instagram announcement, Chastain and Countryman called Lyons an “energetic and creative entrepreneur” intent on keeping the brand’s traditions while also breathing new life into its menus. “Chase fell in love with our business model,” they wrote. “Although Ingle Eats now has a different owner, the food and homestyle cooking will remain the same.”
Lyons is the CEO and founder of CML Consulting and has been a player in the Baton Rouge restaurant game for more than a decade. He opened his first restaurant, City Pork Deli & Charcuterie, in 2013, and since then has also opened Soji: Modern Asian. He came to Baton Rouge by way of Houma, studying psychology at LSU, where he also obtained a business minor. 225 sat down with Lyons to pick his brain on his latest venture. Quotes have been edited for clarity and brevity.
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How did Ingle Eats come across your radar?
Through mutual friends, I learned the original owners, Joan and Shannon, were looking to retire and ride off into the sunset and pass their baby—aka Ingle Eats—off to somebody else that might see it into the future.
I want to emphasize the amazing job Joan and Shannon have done. They’ve started this as a passion project, just feeding their fellow neighbors on Ingleside Drive, hence the name Ingle Eats. They started making family meals and delivering them to their close neighbors. And it just grew by word-of-mouth, and it’s grown into them renting out a commercial kitchen and hiring awesome high school and college kids to help them produce all these meals. It’s a great family environment, and it’s a great business. They’re very passionate about what they do, and I just really look forward to continuing that legacy of what they’ve already established, and seeing where we can go with this.
Ingle Eats is already a favorite in the community. What’s your vision for it?
They’ve done a tremendous job so far; I think there’s so much growth potential. We’re only delivering on two days right now, Tuesday and Thursday. I have plans to expand the kitchen and add more storage, thus giving us the opportunity to expand our delivery range.
How do you plan to execute that?
I would love to ultimately develop an app that you can download and order from during our delivery days just to make it easier for purchase. Right now, everybody can go to our website, ingleeats.com, and make orders that way through either pick-up or delivery.
How long do you think all of those plans will take?
I don’t want to grow too fast too soon. They have a great business model now and are producing quality. We’re going to grow in stages, just like any new acquisition and any new business. So, it’s probably going to start with the expansion of the kitchen. We have to do that first before we can really expand our delivery range. And we have to develop an app, so that takes time. We’re not in a rush. We want to do it right.
Eventually, we’ll expand our menu and offer a lot more catering options, not just meal delivery. We’ll also be able to cater corporate events, weddings, tailgates, luncheons. So in addition to our meal delivery service, we’ll eventually have a catering menu that people can order from daily.
What’s inspired you in all your different ventures in the restaurant game? And how are you applying that to Ingle Eats?
I’m inspired by eating at really cool restaurants in other markets. That’s kind of how City Pork came to be. I ate at Cochon Butcher in New Orleans, and I thought this great gourmet sandwich shop and charcuterie concept could do pretty well in Baton Rouge. So I just went for it. I came back and opened up City Pork Deli, and we did smoked meats in-house, charcuterie in-house, all that good stuff. So, I like to travel to the bigger markets and see what’s happening there … but I like to put my twist, you know, make it approachable for the Baton Rouge market. I think that there is kind of a demand for home-cooked, quality meals. Ingle Eats has proven that, being in business for 13 years.
I think in the post-COVID world, you have to bring food to people. We still have Soji, which is doing great, but I think that people really enjoy getting food delivered to them. We’re just trying to bring a quality, home-cooked family meal to your doorstep, so you don’t even have to leave the house. People like convenience, and if we pair convenience and quality together, I think that we’re going to produce a pretty good product—and that they’re going to come back for more.
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What else do you have cooking within the restaurant and hospitality world?
We definitely want to focus our attention on Ingle Eats for 2025. We want to do the renovations necessary that are going to allow us to expand. We want to expand our catering menu. We want to do weddings and corporate functions. We did a lot of tailgates last semester, and we want to do more tailgates this semester with a different menu and more variety. So 2025 is kind of focused on Ingle Eats and maximizing that potential. If any other opportunities come our way, then we’ll definitely pursue those—but just looking to focus on Ingle Eats right now.
Find more information about Ingle Eats on its website at ingleeats.com, or follow it on Instagram at @ingleeats.