Hayden Hall, Closed Since COVID’s Start, Reopens With New Vendors and Owners (2024)

COVID-19 lockdowns hit less than two months after DMK Restaurants opened Hayden Hall, a food hall inside at 333 S. Wabash Street in the Loop. The current owners of the building — affectionately known as “Big Red” — New York-based real estate development and investment firm SHVO, have partnered with The Budlong Hot Chicken owners Craveworthy Brands to reopen the space to provide meals for area office workers.

SHVO purchased the building around the start of COVID, attracted to the “Big Red” skyscraper’s dramatic appearance and views of Lake Michigan and Grant Park. The office tower’s occupancy is now at the same level as it was pre-pandemic, so SHVO CEO Michael Shvo felt it was finally time to reopen the 25,000-square-foot food hall.

“Hayden Hall was really about creating a place for both tenants and Chicagoans to come and journey through different food experiences,” Shvo said. “It was important to have a true variety there that people can come enjoy multiple times or if you and your friends are not necessarily on the same page of what you want to eat.”

Craveworthy Brands

Hayden Hall was designed to include multiple concepts from DMK along with food from other restaurants like casual seafood chain Brown Bag Seafood Co. and chef Joe Farina’s Victory Italian. But all of the stalls at this incarnation are operated by Craveworthy Brands, the franchise operator from former Jimmy John’s CEO Gregg Majewski who purchased The Budlong Hot Chicken in 2022 from Jared Leonard. Leonard founded the Budlong in Chicago before he moved to Colorado. Before starting Craveworthy, Majewski had served as CEO of Mongolian Concepts, the owner of Flat Top Grill and BD’s Mongolian Grill, and he led the acquisition of those brands in 2023.

The Budlong will have a spot in the food hall along with Soom Soom, a Los Angeles-based Mediterranean concept, and Lucky Cat Poke Company, which has 44 virtual locations and opened its first location in the Oakbrook Center Mall last summer. Hayden Hall will also host a coffee bar and provide a testing ground for Scramblin’ Ed’s, a new concept focused on breakfast sandwiches and wraps.

“The coffee bar and Scramblin’ Ed’s is 100 percent geared towards [workers in] the building,” Majewski says. “We’d love to be able to get the traffic from other people and commuters walking in, but that’s going to be a delivery play more than people coming into the dining room.”

Catered meals will be delivered to the building’s tenants as well as other nearby offices.

“Offices need to have people back and so they’re bribing people with food and spending the money there because if they don’t have a full office, they have to pay rent for nobody being there, so it’s cheaper for them to buy lunch,” Majewski says. “It’s the new world. COVID has changed people’s willingness to commute back to work.”

Hayden Hall is currently open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., with the coffee bar and Scramblin’ Ed’s opening at 7 a.m. The goal is to eventually stay open until 5 p.m., but Majewski said catering is the long-term profit center of the venture. Craveworthy will also rent parts of the dining room for meetings and other private events.

The building is home to 1.2 million square feet of office space including the headquarters of Northern Trust and the Chicago Housing Authority. Tenants had been requesting the amenity, and Shvo interviewed several companies to find a new operator for Hayden Hall.

Craveworthy Brands

“What [Craveworthy] offers is consistency, which is something I think is really important,” Shvo said. “The variety of the brands and the diversity of the brands was quite attractive and we tried all the food and the food was great.”

While there will eventually be a total of eight vendors, only five are currently open. The space originally devoted to a full-service restaurant from Ada Street will be taken by Krafted Burger Bar + Tap, a concept from chef Robert Kabakoff with locations in Bolingbrook and Elmhurst. Majewski says he wants to get the lunch business humming before moving on to phase two of the project, but he’s also concerned about security.

“The timeline is going to depend on several factors, including the mayor [Brandon Johnson] and how he polices Wabash at night,” Majewski says. “I have Flat Top Grill two blocks away, and the night business has not been present. Actually having police out would be a start.”

Majewski’s comments come as Johnson, for the first time since he was in office, spoke during the James Beard Awards, held on Monday, June 10 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Johnson has been a polarizing figure for some restaurant owners who have bristled at his progressive agenda which they complain has unfairly raised the cost of operations. Johnson’s agenda includes the phasing out of the tipped minimum wage.

Craveworthy will use the space to play with new brands including a hot dog concept dubbed Nomad Dog, Pastizza Pizza and Pasta, and a Mexican concept resembling Chipotle before they make their brick-and-mortar debut. Soom Soom is expected to just be a temporary pop-up as Majewski wants to give it a full restaurant space.

“Because we own the brands and all the bays are ours, we have no problem plugging and playing to see what’s working and keep it fresh for the consumer,” Majewski says. “When you start getting raving fans and you can tell by how many times they’re eating and the credit card data, that dictates what you want to grow.”

Hayden Hall, 333 S. Wabash Avenue