After half a decade serving pastrami sandwiches and burgers to the Dogtown community, Nomad, located at 1227 Tamm Ave. in St. Louis, concluded its operations this past Sunday. A fixture for casual dine-in enthusiasts, the restaurant's closure was confirmed by owner and chef Tommy Andrew in a recent Instagram post yesterday. According to a statement obtained by the St. Louis Business Journal, Andrew insists that the decision was not due to financial hardship but rather to the natural evolution of the business, stating, "It’s been a great five years serving Dogtown in St. Louis."
Opened in February 2020, Nomad navigated through the early challenges of the pandemic, closing briefly and then resuming service in May of the same year. While the restaurant has been met with success, Andrew has expressed the need for a larger space to uphold his commitment to quality service, feeling constricted by the current location's limitations, notorious listed by the owner including a small kitchen with a 6-foot cooler, a 30-pound fryer, and a flat-top grill while trying to feed 500 customers a day, found had been to keep up with patron demand, as reported on KSDK.
In alignment with Andrew's vision of expanding his culinary ventures, he shared plans to open a new establishment featuring a more spacious kitchen and a bar. The aspirations for his next project are to operate a full-service restaurant or fast-casual spot, capable of accommodating the scale he aims to cultivate. Andrew told STLToday that despite the closure, the plans for a "Nomad 2.0" are tentative, and his immediate focus will lie on spending time with family and attending to his mental and physical health.
Nomad's success was not just in patronage but also financial stability. As reported by St. Louis Magazine, the entrepreneur managed to eradicate the debts incurred from starting Nomad in a span of two years. "I made more money than I ever have and worked harder than I ever have to get to the next chapter and felt the time was right to do that," Andrew expressed to St. Louis Business Journal detailing his partnership with Tamm and the subsequent growth shift towards a busier, more club-like environment. This change, Andrew suggests, began to compromise the quality of customer experience he is committed to providing.
