Elevating the experience at Pizitz Food Hall

Bayer Properties spent $70 million to redevelop the old Pizitz department store as a mixed-use project with retail, office and residential uses.

The Pizitz is a milestone in downtown’s revitalization, especially given the emotional bond many local residents had with the old store. And the project’s most public feature is The Pizitz Food Hall, which opened in February 2017 on the building’s first floor and mezzanine.

The Food Hall has about a dozen food vendors, offering everything from hot dogs and sausage biscuits to ramen, Belgian waffles and Indian street food. There also is a bar in the center of the hall called The Louis.

“You can come here with 10 people and everyone can get something different to eat,” said Mindy Rohr, the facility’s experience manager. 

There are also retailers Warby Parker and Yellowhammer Creative, along with The Forge co-working space. And management leaves nothing about the customers’ experience at The Pizitz to chance.

That’s where Rohr comes in.

“My responsibilities are everything the customer experiences from the time they walk into the building — pulling into the parking garage, coming down the elevator, walking across the courtyard, coming into the Food Hall,” she said.

And she’s always looking for ways to maintain and improve the facility.

“What is that customer seeing and how is their experience when they are here?” she said. “That can be anything from working on the stalls to working on getting food turned around faster, price points, service.”

In doing her job, Rohr draws on a strong background in retail, event planning and social media. She draws on a lifelong passion for nurturing local culture, including chefs, makers and artists. And she enjoys being part of a place that’s becoming a key gathering spot in a newly vibrant downtown.

A Lexington, Kentucky, native, Rohr graduated from Eastern Kentucky University in 2004 with a degree in psychology. She worked in retail as a manager with American Eagle and did event planning for a medical education company.

But she found her passion for taking photographs, creating content and being a social influencer when she created a blog, called Love, Lexington, that celebrated local food and culture in her hometown. Through her connections with makers and artists, Rohr also curated a popular local market event.

Rohr’s passion for local comes naturally, since her paternal grandfather was a farmer, her dad an independent mechanic and her dad’s brother a business owner. “This is something that’s always been in my family,” she said.

Rohr and her husband, Jesse, moved from Lexington to Birmingham in May 2016 when she became marketing manager at The Summit, also with Bayer Properties. Rohr curated such events at The Summit as Fido Fest, Sounds of Summer and Food Truck Fridays, as well as social media. In December 2017, she began handling social media for The Pizitz as well.

In August 2018, she moved to The Pizitz full time as one of two property managers for the complex, along with an Arlington Properties staffer. The Food Hall is Rohr’s primary responsibility, along with “everything marketing related,” she said.

A food hall like The Pizitz is, in essence, “an elevated food court,” Rohr said, referring to those clusters of eateries in malls in the 1980s and 1990s, but with more high quality options such as organic and locally sourced dishes.

“Our operators are more restaurant-driven, food-focused, food-forward thinkers,” she said.

Food hall curators must also work to keep up with the shifting “needs and wants of customers” and the new types of cuisine that become popular, according to Rohr. “This food hall will be ever changing, ever evolving,” she said.

Not just anyone can be a successful food operator in a food hall, where a stall may have as little as 300 square feet of space, according to Rohr. The ideal candidate is someone who “knows how to function in a small space and offers something in high demand and of high quality,” she said.

People who’ve operated food trucks often fit the bill, according to Rohr. The Food Hall also draws directly from the Magic City’s vibrant food scene, and “every single food operator here is a local operator,” Rohr said.

“You are supporting your local economy, you are helping someone’s dream come true,” she said.

In addition to helping curate the food offerings at The Pizitz, Rohr creates special events and activities.

“I’m not the person who will come up with the next new, exciting thing, but I’m good at looking at things I like in other places and tailoring it to fit for the places where I’m at now,” Rohr said. “You don’t have to always reinvent the wheel.”

There is Yappy Hour, a pet-friendly happy hour with a mobile bar in the courtyard that adjoins the Food Hall. “We have a great courtyard, and it’s so great to do things there,” Rohr said.

There’s the Flashback Brunch, a 1980s- and 1990s-style DJ event the second Sunday of each month. The Pizitz offers a Moonlight Movies series and staged a fall festival in October. And Rohr has continued The Market at The Pizitz series, done with Yellowhammer Creative, in which local makers and artists pop up along 19th Street North. Her other duties are less creative but still necessary, such as monitoring the tenants’ cleanliness, hours of operation and signage. 

“I’m here to uphold rules and standards,” she said. “Without those, you really lose some of the experience.”

And part of the experience The Food Hall offers is that “it’s a great gathering place,” Rohr said. 

“It’s a place to come with your friends, to be communal,” she said. “We don’t want people to just eat and leave. We want people to stay and hang out with us. We have such a great setting to do that in.”

Editor's note: this article was updated on Jan. 2 to accurately state the number of food vendors at The Pizitz Food Hall.