Pop-up dining entrepreneurs plan south-side restaurant

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Startup Corner: Drake Tillman, Canvas Missouri LLC

The co-owners of fine dining pop-up event company Canvas Missouri LLC are shifting gears with plans to open a restaurant.

Drake Tillman, who co-owns the venture with Hansel Herschend, said the business partners are planning a south-side eatery dubbed Indie. A fan of independent music, Tillman said the restaurant will seek to embrace the culture’s do-it-yourself nature.

“Basically, it’s just a way to allow us to do what we want,” he said, noting the duo are investing $200,000 to $250,000 in Indie.

Like Canvas Missouri, Indie will place an emphasis on seasonal and local vegetables, as well as protein products from area farms that will be processed in-house, Tillman said.

Canvas Missouri has operated semi-permanently on the weekends the past three months at The Artisan's Oven on Commercial Street. With their plans for Indie, the business partners are putting Canvas on hold.

“We want to circle around and do it again in the future, maybe a year or two down the road,” Tillman said. “It was meant to be temporary.

“We were looking at doing something a little more approachable.”

Tillman said he and Herschend are in talks to lease a former restaurant space on East Battlefield Road. Declining to disclose the address, he said the lease may be signed within a month.

“If we get the space that we’re looking at, we’re confident we could do it by the first of the year,” Tillman said of opening plans.