When Ryan Schepers met with Matt Thenhaus to discuss the possibility of hosting a wedding reception at the Fortune Teller Bar, the meeting wound up being between the (eventual) future and former owners of the Cherokee Street establishment.
Instead of simply booking a date, Schepers, a bar regular, learned that Thenhaus was low-key shopping the Fortune Teller around. Thenhaus had hoped to keep the basic feel of his decade-old establishment, and Schepers was more than OK with a relatively turn-key purchase. The notion, right off the bat, was that it could and should continue to be a welcoming presence for all, with a particular emphasis on attracting new/retaining longtime LGBTQ+ patrons.
As Schepers puts it, Thenhaus was looking for a “transfer.”
“Matt’s really proud of this bar and put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it. He was looking for someone to take it over and keep it going, and I had been looking for something to pour my passion and creative energy into. The Fortune Teller had become ingrained in the community. I have a nine-to-five job that pays the bills, but this seemed like a good opportunity to keep a bar open that I didn’t want to see us lose. It’s got that sense of community that people in the neighborhood really love.
“The bar,” Schepers adds, “had been in its past iteration for over a decade. A real neighborhood bar. I didn’t want to completely undo what he’d been building for 10 years. We wanted to love, appreciate, elevate and focus it, but keep the same kind of vibe.”
Ironically, it was the transfer that proved the hardest part of the transaction — the liquor license transfer, that is. After coming to an understanding, Schepers spent five months waiting to get the city to sign off on a license in his name, as short staffing and archaic processes at the St. Louis Excise Commission have drawn complaints from many restaurateurs. He was eventually approved, and the bar reopened on May 19.
In some ways, this era is the bar’s third. Approximately 40 years ago, the Fortune Teller was a gritty dive, one where its owner told fortunes. Thenhaus and his partners opened their bar on the same site, with the same name, after a pause of several decades.
Over the 10 years the Fortune Teller was in business with Thenhaus as a lead operator, the neighborhood around it saw (forgive us) local fortunes change. Growth years, lean years, a pandemic …. all sorts of challenges could be found in and around the Fortune Teller Bar’s front door, and Schepers figures that Cherokee’s role as something of a large-scale, neighborhood-wide incubator for indie businesses will continue.
“That’s the nature of Cherokee Street,” Schepers says. “We feel there’s an upward trend with what’s going on, like the improvements to Love Bank Park. The focus on Cherokee, versus a place like the Grove, is that everyone here has an understanding of what the neighborhood is, rather than changing it to be more comfortable or milquetoast so that people will come down for the first time.”
Incubation has always been a part of the modern Fortune Teller formula as well. The small kitchen space in the rear of the building has been home to several concerns since the bar was expanded across two storefronts. The latest will be Fourth City BBQ, run by Greg Mueller and Erica McKinley. They target an early July opening for their operation, which they describe as wood-fired craft BBQ, with a heavy emphasis on local sourcing for homemade sides and sauces.
Beginning last winter, they’ve been cooking out of a commissary kitchen; customers order take-home BBQ boxes ahead of time and then pick them up. Mueller says it’s gone “really well.”
But, he says, “We were looking for an opportunity to serve our meals hot. When we found out about this space, it made sense. I don’t wanna speak for Ryan, but we both felt that it was a good fit.”
In fact, only about a week passed between the initial meeting and the Fourth City BBQ team deciding to take the plunge. The kitchen facility at Fortune Teller is a simple one, but it has the size and equipment to kickstart Mueller and McKinley’s first brick-and-mortar operation. Mueller admits that St. Louis features a “highly saturated” barbecue market, but the owners feel they have a unique product that’ll register with neighborhood diners and complement the Fortune Teller’s craft cocktails.
Schepers says other recent changes at Fortune Teller — from staffing to new murals and backbar offerings — will come into sharper focus once food is again offered on site.
“It’s really awesome that we came across one another,” Schepers says. “This has been absolutely mutually beneficial. We want to be a cocktail bar that’s able to offer a really great evening.”
To that end, fortune tellers, who’ve been part of the business all the way back to the earlier, earthier version of the Fortune Teller Bar in the 1980s and ‘90s, remain on site. With their near-nightly appearances reading fortunes for patrons, Schepers says, “they’re our heart and soul.”
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