The Starting Point
For the last five years, the Spring Green area has been fortunate to have Pizza Night at the White School, a year-round weekly event that was founded and built into a community tradition by Eric Ferguson, who, with his wife Mary D’Alton run Convivio, the excellent gift and food shop a few doors down the street. The White School is a beautiful old building, and childhood memories of the place remain very alive in the minds of community members who took ballet classes there as children or even went to elementary school there.
The People
Homecoming is co-owned and operated by the team of Leah Spicer, who grew up in the area—and Kyle Beach, who hails from eastern North Carolina. Kyle and Leah share general management responsibilities equally. We both spent time in Asheville, N.C. where we met while managing restaurants. Each of us have run several restaurants, and over time developed a very well-rounded portfolio of restaurant experience. Among many other things, we have tended cocktail bars, run high-volume breakfast services, done extensive catering work, coordinated whole-hog BBQ’s, recreated Indian street food stalls, made so many croissants and so much coffee, worked all aspects of high-end fine dining, and even made a few wedding cakes. We’ve also become good bosses, in that we’ve learned how to run a tight ship while still motivating and inspiring employees in a positive way. On a good day, we know how to coordinate their efforts into something more than the sum of their parts.
We are joined by our chef de cuisine Christian Amador and an amazing crew of Hannah Feller, Nora Murphy, Hannah Gunter, Meg Weindenhof, Sami Zimmerman Seth Krantz, Alyssa Lark, Aubrey Frazier, Celia Luner, Derek Bangert, Kylie and Grace Morrey, Spencer Sova, Grace Bolt, Bodhi Kauss, Nola Birch, Christian and Jocelyn Copper, Sean Bunders, Jameson Ridge, James Bell, Austin Griswold, Lilly Bolt and many of our sweet village kids.
The Restaurant
Spring Green has a number of high quality agricultural producers within a few miles. Amazing meat producers like Enos Farms, Seven Seeds Farm, Straightforward Farms and Cates Family Farm. In addition there is excellent produce from Steadfast Acres and Mary’s Homestead farm, our family farm and many many others. We are lucky to be able to have this bounty, and more importantly, to serve it to the community that works so hard to grow and care for it. It brings us no greater pleasure for a guest to remark how wonderful a dish is and for us to point to the famers family also dining in the restaurant. This is simply why we do what we do. We love exploring food and flavors, and feature many events and popups throughout the year. We offer a range of local and regional craft beers, an extensive wine list, and craft cocktails.
The Values
It is of the utmost importance to us that Homecoming be an inclusive and welcoming space. We want this to be true if you are an employee, a service contractor, a vendor, or of course—one of our dinner guests.
We will be institutionally committed to providing the highest level of service. Everyone we interact with will be treated with a respect and warmth that reflects our genuine love for this community, and we will always strive to meet the needs of our community—both its permanent members and those just passing through.
We will set a work-place culture of good wages, fair treatment, inclusion, and respect. This means paying our staff a $15 per hour starting wage and always making sure that Homecoming is a fulfilling and sustaining place to work.