It isn’t often that a new restaurant opens in Meeker County, but when something new comes along, the hype is contagious.

With the increased vacancy in storefronts along main street in downtown Litchfield, the arrival of the Tavern on Main became one of the most anticipated arrivals in the area. With a fair number of setbacks while attempting to stick to the original opening date in June, owners Bethany and Michael Lee took it day by day.

Now, their business has launched into a new hot-spot in town. Offering a wide variety of dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the Tavern on Main offers guests hearty food in a welcoming and warm environment.

The bar, stocked with liquors and beers, rests at the back of the restaurant ready to quench the thirst of guests. With an impressive burger selection, the Tavern offers American classics alongside salads, wraps and sandwiches.

The atmosphere, coupled with the good spirits of guests, has been the goal for the Litchfield couple all along.

“This was all worth it,” Bethany said. “This is the part that we’ve waited for.”

Since opening the doors to the Tavern in late August, the town’s eagerness to get in and experience what they’ve been waiting for has shown. Positive reviews have flooded the Tavern’s Facebook page, and walking past the front windows, there are always customers seated at a table or cozied up to the bar.

“It’s been a lot of emotional support from the community,” Bethany said. “People have been coming forward and saying, ‘Thank you for investing in main street.’ It’s been great to see people being thankful and excited, which then makes us thankful and excited.”

The warmth from the community has highlighted the Lee’s experience in renovating and opening the restaurant, but early doubts from critics regarding whether they would ever even open pushed the couple harder into proving it would get done.

“People forget that real people put in real time and real effort and real sacrifices during 120-hour weeks,” Bethany said.

Despite the setbacks in renovating, ensuring that everything met code standards and making the space unique, it’s the management style that Bethany feels is a strong suit to making their business a success.

“Mike and I are very involved here,” she said. “We’re here all day, everyday. We also have a different management style.We both know customer service and the needed experience to operate successfully.”

Their style has, according to Bethany, been a huge contribution in the family-like dynamic between employees. She stressed the importance of employees enjoying where they work, and the light-hearted nature of the Tavern adds one more reason to be charmed during business hours.

“At night especially, you can feel the energy and the synergy between the employees,” she said.

The energy is also attributed to the makeover that the space underwent since the Lee’s acquired the building in March.

“We tried to keep the original feeling but included modern style,” Lee said, running her hand on the wall above a booth. “I mean, you can just see the age of this place.”

The history of the Tavern, despite it’s newly renovated interior, had been in the same ownership since the 1980s, when the space was originally used as the popular Main Street Cafe.

For Bethany, the Tavern is rooted in her career beyond her management position. A former employee at the Main Street Cafe, she saw an opportunity to acquire the space to make it a new eatery for Litchfield. Her hard work ethic encouraged her to step into a more managerial and corporate role after serving at the cafe, and she’s proud of how it’s been going so far.

“I’ve always been self-motivated. The desire to do a good job never had to be told twice to me,” she said.

And so far, Bethany has found her role at the Tavern to be exactly what she had always hoped for. But as with any new restaurant ownership, the Lee’s are taking in the ups and downs of the experience.

“We’re learning as we go,” Lee said. “It’s definitely been a learning process with a ton of crash courses.”

Those crash courses come with the territory, and for the Lee’s, it’s just come to be a growing experience at the Tavern on Main.