The Tandem Restaurant Partners — Tony and Stephanie Westmoreland in collaboration with Ryan Marsh — are the new owners of Front St. Deli, the iconic restaurant at 77 South Front and Union.
The eatery, which was featured in the 1993 film, The Firm, is slated to re-open by November. “Hopefully, in three months we’ll get her back open if not sooner,” Westmoreland says.
Tandem Restaurant Partners operates several Memphis restaurants, including Carolina Watershed, Side Car Cafe, and Ben Yay’s. “You’ll see us partnering with other restaurateurs to open up new concepts.”
Marsh, Westmoreland adds, will be involved with “what we do as a whole and getting this [Front St. Deli] up and going for us.”
Marsh, 31, the newest member of Tandem Partners, moved from Pennsylvania to Memphis when he was 14. He previously was operations manager for MOXY Memphis Downtown hotel across from Court Square.
Why did he want to get involved with Front St. Deli? “It’s the oldest deli in Memphis — over 45 years old,” he says.
And, he adds, “I’m a big fan of Memphis, a big believer in Downtown and the history we have down here.”
It’s important for him to help bring the Front St. Deli project to life and “bring it back to its former glories.”
Tom Cruise plays Harvard educated tax lawyer Mitch McDeere in the movie, which was filmed in Memphis. All the sandwiches were named after Cruise movies.
Those sandwiches will remain, Marsh says. “Tony and I put our heads together,” Marsh says. “Number one, I want to keep the Deli as close to what it was before. And Tony had a great idea to include some hot food, too. And we want to start bringing in gourmet hot dogs.”
Marsh also has a side goal: “I would like to bring authentic Philly cheesesteaks as well, But that’s still in limbo.”
And maybe open later using “third party delivery service like Uber for sandwiches and hot dogs for the Downtown community,”
And, Westmoreland says, “We have all the recipes. All the intellectual property came with the business.”
They will be “tweaking the menu, perfecting it, and making sure what we’re doing makes sense,” Marsh says. “The way the menu was structured before, it was all over the place. We want to simplify everything and eventually turn it over to where we’ll have a few cooks and I’ll be heading the day-to-day.”
Look for more room at Front St. Deli. “We’ll be going through negotiations over the next two and a half months to do an update,” Westmoreland says. “Not only update the building itself, but the outside facade.”
They’re working with the building owner to add two garage doors in front. “So, you can open up Front St. Deli to the public on the street side and enjoy Front Street not just from the inside, but outside as well,” Westmoreland says. “We’ll be reorganizing the inside to facilitate more people so you’ll have more seating. The goal is to have 10 to 15 people fit inside as well as outside.”
They want to “keep it as authentic as possible. Not change much. Keep the history of it. Keep it as close to the original as possible with just size changes and some rearrangement to get the capacity as full as we can.”
Front St. Deli “falls in tandem” with some of the other properties they have partnered with, including Hernando’s Hide-a-way, “one of the oldest music venues,” and Growlers, “being one of the nostalgic music venues in Memphis,” Westmoreland says. “Trying to preserve that nostalgia. And I think Front St. Deli is the same motive. Trying to keep Memphis the Memphis we remember growing up.”
