Liberty Twp. bar transforms kitchen with help of food truck, hot dog stand

Mike Martin, owner of East Coast Eatz food truck, has taken over the kitchen at The Draft Bar & Grille on Yankee Road in Liberty Township. The menu has been revamped and includes many new items including Philly cheesesteak, smoked wings and quesadillas. NICK GRAHAM / STAFF

Credit: Nick Graham

Credit: Nick Graham

Mike Martin, owner of East Coast Eatz food truck, has taken over the kitchen at The Draft Bar & Grille on Yankee Road in Liberty Township. The menu has been revamped and includes many new items including Philly cheesesteak, smoked wings and quesadillas. NICK GRAHAM / STAFF

Three Butler County businesses have joined forces to reinvent a neighborhood restaurant and pub.

Caleb Ford and Jason Ross, owners of The Draft Bar & Grille in Liberty Twp., wanted to put all their focus into the bar side of operations and introduce a new concept into the kitchen, one that included a revised menu.

The entrepreneurs at the business, which opened at 7029 Yankee Road in 2011, turned to Liberty Twp. residents Mike Martin and Tiffany Profitt of East Coast Eatz Food Truck & Catering and Tiffany Liston of Hyde Park-based gourmet hot dog stand Morgan’s Friends to make that a reality.

It took about a month for the business partners to iron out a deal that gives the latter two chefs creative control of the kitchen by the time of the re-launch in early July, Martin said.

Since then, kitchen sales have increased, he said.

“The entire menu was changed with the exception of four items — loaded nachos, stadium chips, fries and tots,” he said. “We kept some items and improved them, for example the traditional wings are now smoked then deep fried.”

In concocting the new menu, East Coast Eatz and Morgan’s Friends tried to incorporate items customers don’t often see in bars and also retain traditional bar fare.

“We want to appeal to everyone,” Martin said.

The new menu has a wider variety of items that many restaurant-bar combos don’t provide, including The Breakfast Dog, Smoked Wings, Thai Chicken Tacos, Philly Cheesesteaks and Beef Quesadilla, Martin said.

“We do a lot of home made items like our pico, salsa and ranch. We smoke our wings,” he said. “We fresh make our Asian slaw.”

He said he, Profitt and Liston are are thankful for the opportunity inside a well-established bar.

“Our busy season is in the spring and summer and the bar’s busy season is the fall and winter,” he said. “We’re excited for this partnership and look forward to what the future holds.”

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