Lovely in Springfield is moving on up — to the west side of Main Street Springfield.

For years, the health-oriented restaurant was at the corner of 3rd and Main. The restaurant, which had been an antique store initially, was snug for its growing customer base. Now, Lovely has taken over the former Swallowtail Spirits building, becoming the first and last thing people will see entering or leaving Main Street. 

The move is more than just growth in space for Lovely. It’s what owner Sarah Adler sees as a way to boost production of popular pickled products and juice, and foster a place for a community, including farmers markets, live music and shared kitchens. 

What started Lovely’s story was to have a place that offers good, quality food, Adler says. As young professionals, she and her husband, co-owner Josh Matthews, traveled cities and explored cafés. That’s where she says they discovered the beauty of a café that you could eat at every day and enjoy a cup of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal or sandwich. And that was what inspired Lovely when the duo opened it in 2020. 

“At the beginning, we really wanted to be a staple for the community,” Adler says. “And it evolved, as all good things did. It evolved with what the community needed and asked for.” 

Opening up shortly before COVID-19 meant dealing with transformed eating, supply chains and everything in between, but one positive that Adler noticed was a growing demand from customers who wanted meals with quality ingredients that wouldn’t sit as a pit in your stomach all day. “You’re not supposed to feel tired after lunch. You’re supposed to be energized to finish your day off,” she says. 

Tuna salad sandwiches are as American as apple pie for diners, but for some kitchens that can mean sitting in a fridge for a while. Lovely’s philosophy — as with avocado toast and just about everything — is to make their yellowfin tuna to order, Adler says. 

“We keep it simple, but I think it’s the fact that it’s fresh or not, you know, making it a few days before, or even, like, at the beginning of the day, to use throughout the day,” Adler says. “There’s a big flavor profile that leaves once it gets cold.”

A tuna salad might not be the best case of how much prep the folks of Lovely invest in their food. If anything captures the time they invest in their food, look to the pickles. Pickles are core to Lovely because, as Adler says, it’s hard to have a sandwich without one. And the restaurant wouldn’t have survived the pandemic without selling jars of pickles during the takeout phases.

At Lovely’s former location, Adler says they were in — well, quite the pickle. The kitchen didn’t have room for a sizable pickle inventory or space to store vegetables. Lovely only had room for produce that they could pickle and juice. “I would see something great at the farmers market and I couldn’t bring it in,” she says. 

But the new space at 111 Main Street is a new pickle era for Lovely. Adler is eyeing new pickle adventures, from sunchokes, cauliflower to green garlic. “We won’t be limited to a two-door fridge,” she says. “Pickles, we feel like that’s kind of the future for us.” 

The new location almost became an exclusive commercial kitchen for wholesale fermented food and pickles. A larger scale pickle sale is still the goal, but Adler has a vision that the new restaurant space can offer customers more elbow room, as well as a community-focused storefront. 

With the larger footprint, she says they’re already renting out some space to coffee roaster Slow Joe’s Coffee Roasters, but Lovely is also looking for other ways to include the food community. That could look like having pickling classes, adding food carts to the space, inviting other fermenters to the kitchen and even hosting farmers markets. 

“It’s going to be a kind of secret garden where it’s a safe environment to be,” Adler says. “I actually don’t use the word community. Everyone uses it and it’s an easy word to throw around, and I think you’ve got to earn it. But I think that’s something that this space will be for the community is another safe, fun, inviting space that you can come hang out at.” Lovely is at 111 Main Street, Springfield. 541-636-8662. Hours are 7 am to 9 pm daily. LovelySpringfield.com.