Jun. 14—A new breakfast and lunch diner has opened up inside the former Clabber Girl building.
Petty Pit Stop had its grand opening Wednesday, with a ribbon-cutting attended by Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett.
Owner Jen Petty said that when searching for a location for the cafe, the Clabber Girl space was too nice to pass up.
"The building is just too beautiful to be sitting," she said. "This is enticing and a little bit intimidating at the same time. It's big shoes to fill. But I don't know how you walk in this space and say, 'Mmm — no, this not for me.' You just walk and say 'yes' no matter what. You can't deny it."
Petty recalled visiting Clabber Girl in its heyday.
"They used to do fancy menus on the first Friday of every month and those were always fun and exciting, trying different foods and seeing the creative things they were doing," she said.
In 2010, Petty moved to Indiana as an accountant from Chicago, "where you can get food delivered all the time," she said. "I moved to a rural area on a farm where you can get nothing delivered. I learned very quickly that I needed to learn to cook."
As she did that, her husband Chad — a farmer in Sullivan County — expressed a yearning to open a restaurant.
"The idea is born out of the idea of farmers being in the field so long, so I started out of my house selling (to them) from the back of my car in parking lots," she said. "I did that for year before looking for a location."
Petty Pit Stop opened in February 2017, sharing a space with a local bakery. After a year, both businesses had grown enough to move into their own facilities, so Petty moved her restaurant into downtown Sullivan in February 2018. She opened Juicy, an adjacent smoothie bar, last year. She continues to operate the Sullivan locations.
"We have brought some items here from Juicy — our smoothies and smoothie bowls," Petty said.
The new Terre Haute diner attempts to source from local farms, she said — she gets bison from a local farm in Dugger. All breads are made by local bakeries, and Tractor Beverage Co. supplies the eatery with organic drinks.
Before Wednesday's grand opening, Petty Pit Stop had a soft opening on May 31.
"We really quietly opened our doors last week, and whatever happened happened," Petty said. "It gave us an opportunity to get a good feel for the flow and work out some bugs."
Petty Pit Stop offers a variety of sandwiches, salads and gluten-free Buddha bowls, as well as a number of gourmet mac-and-cheese dishes and loaded baked potatoes.