The visionary couple talks about stress, caring for others and the greatest hindrance to Chattanooga's restaurant scene.

We've been through a lot. We don't take our customers for granted.

Years ago, Erik Niel was duck-hunting in Louisiana with his brother. After a long morning in the blind, they stop at the gas station for a little pick-me-up.

Brother pumps unleaded. Erik walks to the cooler. Grabs two High Life tall boys in a can.

The woman behind the counter takes the tall boys, tears a white paper towel from the roll nearby, wraps them each in then takes little Koozie and hands them to a very thirsty and tired Erik Niel.

"This is the greatest thing in life," he thought.

Over the course of his career, Erik has visited, worked in and created some of the South's finest restaurants, but those Louisiana gas station tall boys kindly wrapped in paper towels and Koozie? Handed over with such thoughtfulness and care?

To define hospitality, that's the story he tells.

"It's that feeling," he said. "What does happiness feel like? Somebody's being intentional about taking care of you."

Erik Niel, Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee

Since 2005, Erik and Amanda Niel have been exquisitely intentional about taking care of Chattanoogans, building their restaurant careers here on this very premise.

"We've made them feel comfortable," Amanda said. "If you're really good at it, people have an emotional connection."

"There's a hole in the bucket," Erik said, "and hospitality can fill it."

Amanda Niel, Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee

Their three restaurants – Little Coyote, Main Street Meats and Easy Bistro & Bar – are known internationally; as chef-owner, Erik's been nominated for two James Beard awards as the Southeast's best chef and named Chef of the Year by the Tennessee Tourism & Hospitality Association. As owner-manager, Amanda, who grew up in Soddy Daisy, is known throughout the South for her event-planning, design and business management style.

Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee

"I don't want to ever work for anyone else," one Main Street Meats employee said. "Nobody, nowhere else but the Niels."

Few chefs and restaurant owners, if any, have achieved more in this city.

Yet, there was a price: exhausting days, sleepless nights and bareknuckle bank accounts.

They've almost quit.

Barely made rent.

Endured scorn and insults. Serving oysters ... in Chattanooga?

Charging how much for a hamburger?

"People gave us shit," said Erik, "for a $9 hamburger without fries."

Main Street Meats, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Over the years, they had to overhaul their own lives – therapy, breath work, exercise – to stay in the game.

"The longevity," said Erik. "From beginning to end."

In 2005, the Niels opened Easy Seafood Bistro & Bar with a small business loan and funds raised from an invitation-only dinner party. Erik was 26, Amanda, 24. Their vision: Creole-inspired seafood in Chattanooga.

"We scraped together $650,000," said Erik.

Easy Bistro & Bar, Chestnut St., Chattanooga, Tennessee

Easy opened at 220 seats. Today, such a concept would cost ...

"Now, it's well north of $2 million," Erik said.

The restaurant was met with praise and ridicule.

Some rolled their eyes: oysters and seafood in a landlocked city 500 miles from the Gulf?

Then, 2009.

"The financial crisis," said Amanda. "What have we done?"

"The longest year of my life," said Erik.

"We were scraping by to get $1,000. Working 95 hours a week," Amanda said, worrying: "we'll never get married. We'll never have kids. We won't make it."

For everyone else out there struggling and hustling to make it, perhaps it helps to remember that the Niels, too, were once afraid, exhausted and one rung away from letting go.

"We've been through a lot," Amanda said. "We don't take our customers for granted, especially if you've learned and been through things like that. People who've been our supporters for a really long time get us through that."

Amanda Landreth grew up in a Soddy Daisy family that started and ran its own construction and plumbing company, her DNA was forged by entrepreneurial hard work. She found the restaurant industry: St. John's, Southside, where she and Erik met.

She calls herself a "hospitality hustler."

Amanda Niel, Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee

Erik left Louisiana for college in Texas then culinary school in Vail at Johnson & Wales; in 2000, he moved to Chattanooga on whim, hoping to see his brother play and sister cheer at Baylor School football games. Like Amanda: Southside Grill, then the sous chef at St. John's.

"In culinary school , I committed to figure out a way to be in restaurants my entire career. So many people said: get a real job. I wanted this to be my real job," he said.

Yellowfin tuna tostada, Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee

Earlier this summer, renown chef James Kent died; he was 45. Heart attack. It caught their attention.

"Stress?" wondered Amanda. "If you're going to be in this business long-term, you have to manage stress. We've both been to counseling. We both work out. It has to be a priority, it has to be intentional."

"We know how to breathe properly. We know we don't have to answer email immediately."

Even in good times, there is an inherent, pounding stress to restaurant work. The toll is similar to a performer – someone always on-stage, under the spotlight, all the attention that feels like a blessing one night, a burden the next.

Erik Niel, Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee

"Had we continued as the same two people we were in 2009," said Amanda, "we wouldn't have made it long-term."

So, why not walk away?

"I'm a stubborn ass. I don't like being told no," said Erik.

"Me, too. I don't like being told I can't make it," Amanda said.

In 2014, they took over operations of Main Street Meats, next to a young Niedlov's Bakery & Cafe. Back then, Main Street was a different, desolate place.

Main Street Meats, Main St., Chattanooga, Tenn.

"It was dark at 8pm," Amanda said. "My grandmother would call: are you safe? My dad would park outside and wait for me to get off work."

"The dark side of the moon," said Erik.

Originally called Link 41, the butcher-shop-restaurant was the vision of Tom Montague and named after Main St., which linked to Highway 41.

"It was a butcher counter with a grill in the back," Erik remembers. "You'd grab the meat out of the case. If they sold five or six burgers a day, they'd think it was busy."

Then, the Niels introduced their vision: a brick-and-mortar restaurant + butcher shop that sourced from local farms.

The concept became foundational in this region's local food movement and pivotal – along with original owner John Sweet's Niedlov's Bakery & Cafe – to the transformation of Main Street.

But in 2014?

"It was radical. Wildly radical," said Erik. "Charging $9 for a hamburger without fries? People lost their shit. They were berating us."

Clinging to their vision, they also built a reputation as fair, generous owners in a business that isn't always so.

They name off managers, servers, chefs with love and pride – "the best we've known" and "we'll cry when he leaves" – as if they were speaking of good friends, not employees.

"A lot of press focuses on us," Amanda said. "But it takes people. All these young people we want to be next manager. It puts a light in our eyes."

Stuffed avocado, Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee

People that live here need to support local restaurants.

What's the future for Chattanooga's restaurant scene?

"That word is so interesting," said Erik. "Everybody desires a 'scene.' But what makes a scene?"

The Bend. South Broad. Another riverfront revitalization. What is the saturation point for Chattanooga restaurants?

"You can’t rely on visitors. People need to know how important they are. They get to decide. If they want chain pizza, that’s what we get. Another burger bar? That’s what we get. You vote with your money," said Erik.

"People that live here need to support local restaurants," said Amanda.

"If you want a vibrant restaurant scene where people are creative, you have to support their creativity," he said.

Yellowfin tuna, stuffed avocado, summer tomato salad, Little Coyote.

Both agreed: the potential exists to elevate Chattanooga into a vibrant scene.

"An amazingly vibrant scene," Erik said. "It's going to be an interesting 10 years in this city."

One massive way the city could help?

Streamline and update the permitting process. Immediately.

"It is the greatest hindrance to development," he said. "The city permitting office snafu is one of the greatest hindrances to restaurant industry building in this city."

Delays, poor communication and exhaustive inspections ball-and-chain restaurant developers. Costs pile up and keep piling.

At Little Coyote, which opened last fall in St. Elmo, "we were delayed four or five months because of permitting. It cost us $80,000-to-$90,000 waiting on the city," he said.

This is part of the death knell of the chef-owner.

One restaurant builder tells his clients to add at least six months onto the timeline, Erik said, and $40,000 to the budget because of the city's permitting process, or lack of.

Repaving the whole parking lot because it was missing tree wells. Industrial-strength fire retardant sprayed on Little Coyote's rafter system.

"The guys that came here to do this normally work 100,000-square foot buildings. One of them walked in here and said, 'What the fuck are we doing here?' Nobody knew it was a code," Erik remembers.

"You cannot build out a restaurant in one year because of the permitting process in this city. It is the greatest hindrance to development that has ever existed. It adds 10% to the overall cost."

Enter developers, especially out-of-state developers, who have the capital and time to endure the permitting process, but also will shape our restaurant scene without any local connection or vision. Is it a true restaurant scene or a developer-created restaurant scene?

"This is part of the death knell of the chef-owner," Erik said.

Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee

Earlier this summer, the Niels traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, sampling mescals for Little Coyote.

At 7,000 feet, they ate at a 12-seat restaurant, each wondering in the middle of their dinner: where are all the small places in Chattanooga?

Blueberry Mezcal Mule, Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tenn.

"Look at Main Street Meats before our patio. It had 40 seats," he said. "I don't know why we haven't figured that out yet."

In Oaxaca, they also found the thing they love most.

"Hospitality," she said. "It was brilliant and amazing. We were looking for it."

Yellowfin tuna tostada, Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee

"Hospitality is the rare thing where if you understand it, you can get more out of it. It fills a need. Some of us have to be hospitable to people. It’s rare you can get more out of giving than you get," Erik said.

Someone brings you water. Or a tall boy wrapped in a paper towel.

"It can happen when you get your oil changed," Erik said. "It's a feeling you get when somebody is taking care of you."

Summer tomato salad, Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee

When the Niels interview potential employees, they always ask one particular question: how do you define hospitality? Can you recognize it when it's happening to you?

"Either people have the hospitality bone or not. You can train it, but it’s impossible to create," he said.

At Cornel University, Amanda's signed up for a course on AI and the future of the restaurant industry. They both closely watch regional policy-makers – are you helping small restaurant owners or hurting us? – and developers, whose decisions can shape the culinary world perhaps quicker than anyone else.

They still hold true to their original vision: love people through food and drink. Offer something rare and tangibly distinct.

"They like it here," said Amanda. "We’ve made them feel comfortable. If you’re really good at it, people have emotional connection. When people feel calm, it's really special."

Amanda and Erik Niel, Little Coyote, St. Elmo, Tennessee

All photography by Sarah Unger (sarah@foodasaverb.com)

All design by Alex DeHart

All words by David Cook (david@foodasaverb.com)

Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in partnering with us? Email: david@foodasaverb.com

This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.