Edison’s Pub in Tremont is one of Cleveland’s most recognizable and popular bars. Which is why, late last year, when owner Mark LaGrange put it on the market after 36 years of stewardship, Jason Beudert felt a near religious need to scoop it up for Hangry Brands. Which, if you’ve been following along with the company, wasn’t very surprising.
The hospitality group was only created in 2023, but, by that point in 2025, its portfolio had already grown rapidly. In three years they’d built or bought STEAK, Jolene’s, Society Lounge, Geraci’s Slice Shop, Danny’s Breakroom, Lionheart Coffee and The Yard on 3rd in Willoughby.
Beudert was intent on making Edison’s next.
LaGrange got two offers. One potential suitor wanted to convert the venerable old pub into a tequila bar. Hangry, in contrast, wanted to change nothing of substance.
“For me and for us, when an icon comes up for sale that is most likely going to change concepts, we did what was right to do. We stepped in and saved this place,” Beudert, CEO of Hangry Brands, said on a recent afternoon at a table by Edison’s pool table.
“We gave this whole place a bath, man,” Beudert said before later touring Scene through what he said would be a half-million dollars of investments in the property. Five TVs and six new speakers were installed. The popcorn machine, long on its last legs, was replaced. The koi pond in the back got a heater. (And fish, named SpongeBob and Squarepants.) “We got rid of that death-trap bathroom, too,” Beudert said, nodding to the basement. “You remember that thing? It was a complete nightmare.”
Beudert is 51. He wears silvering hair in a middle spike. He speaks with machine-gun rapidity and energizes his talk with hyperboles like a buddy-buddy executive on a sales pitch: this here is world-class, that there is super-fun or exciting. It’s all high-octane energy all the time, and that’s reflected both in the company’s growth – it has quadrupled in size in three years – and the design of the group’s restaurant concepts.
Most of which are very of the moment, constructed to be Instagrammable and cheeky, with themes and conceits that abandon subtlety. You see it in the Pac-Man games and neon signage — “SLICE TO MEET YOU”— at Geraci’s Slice Shop. You see it in Society’s plastic-topped bathtub tables and its “Throuple” appetizer tray. In Jolene’s tractor seats and guitar shot-ski. In STEAK’s meat hooks and Ferris wheel ice-cream sundaes. In the time clock and office paraphernalia at Danny’s Breakroom on Professor.Danny’s Breakroom in Tremont. Photo by Mark Oprea.
An injection of aesthetic fun to some—“Jason just understands how to bring joy through whimsy,” said Sam McNulty. “I mean, a Ferris wheel of toppings. It’s great.”—and a sledgehammer of cloying internet gimmick to others.
“They’re destroying Cleveland, trying to turn it into TEMU Nashville,” one Reddit commenter noted on a recent thread. “Their restaurants look like Pinterest boards and lack a true, authentic personality,” another wrote.
And, of course, those in the middle.
“I don’t care about socio-economic status or makeup of anything like that—Jason’s no savior,” Ricardo Sandoval told Scene. “I just want them to be the right neighbor.”
Hangry’s pace and scale are undeniable, and hard to comprehend in the current hospitality landscape, where younger people drink less, diners increasingly choose takeout or delivery, and even stable restaurants struggle with staffing and thin margins. Criticism, then, might just be envy in disguise.
Since debuting The Yard on 3rd, a seasonal food truck park in downtown Willoughby that Beudert “borrowed” from a similar concept in Dallas, Hangry has opened or purchased nine businesses. And there are seven more on the way, including a redo of the Corner Alley on East 4th; a second STEAK in Chagrin Falls (as well as a scaled-down version at Progressive Field); a Lionheart Reserve Coffee in Playhouse Square; Hidden Tiki going in above Edison’s Pub; a contemporary Chinese-American spot called Paper Tiger in the former Crust space in Tremont; and The Dugout, a seasonal bar and pocket park on East 4th Street.
The average hospitality group operates between two and five local businesses. By the end of the decade, Beudert wants to have 20.
Which begs more than a few questions: How is Hangry able to open or purchase so many damn places so damn fast? Do all of the concepts have staying power? Are the businesses making money? And what is Beudert’s endgame?
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Hangry Brands might feel like a company shaped by how diners experience bars and restaurants in the social-digital age, but Beudert says its guiding light is far more analog: his time spent at Disney’s Magic Kingdom.
“I call it my Disney Eyes,” he said. “I see my Disney Eyes in everything we touch.”
Born in Woodhaven, Queens, in 1974, Beudert grew up in a family entrenched in restaurant work. He got his first job, at 13, busing tables at the Carnegie Deli in Manhattan, which his father managed. He moved to Florida to work at a Greek restaurant. In his twenties, he was hired by ESPN to open restaurants in Atlanta and Chicago. In Cleveland, he co-created the first Barrio, a pre-Hangry take, one might say, on Americanized tacos made “fun.”
But it was Beudert’s work at Magic Kingdom, overseeing fast-casual spots on Main Street, that he counts as his most informative.
“Just the way they immerse you in experience, there’s nothing like it,” Beudert said. “Everything here at Hangry is curated. Everything here is thought out.”
In early February, a week before Beudert flew with his wife to Florida to adopt their fourth and fifth children, he and Julia Licastro, one of Hangry’s five owner-operators, tooke e around Corner Alley ahead of the company’s takeover of the property in a deal with MRN.
Born in Southern California, Licastro studied advertising in Chicago before moving to Cleveland in 2019. She signed on to run STEAK, she said, because she was convinced of Beudert’s ability to make a mark on Cleveland food culture. “I have worked in a plethora of industries. Radio, retail, sales,” she said. “The amount of time I put into these companies and never saw a dime from them?” She clarified: “Yeah, it’s my dream job.”
At Corner Alley, the notes immediately started flying. Sidewalks needed pressure-washing. Shuffleboard and mini golf must replace those stale arcade games. The VIP lanes needed a refresh. A dance club should be built in the basement.
Beudert, who once briefly detoured into food media, both at Scene and Channel 19, took out his phone and showed me his umpteenth idea. As usual, it was an Instagram video. A bar in Phoenix had installed a gilded bank tube to mix drinks in the fashion of a 1920s mailroom. He had to do it at Corner Alley. (With a custom bowling pin cocktail shaker.)
“It was my holy shit moment,” Beudert said. He counted the six patrons around the bar. He nodded at the rows of empty tables. “I mean, come on. Look around, dude. It’s boring. What the eff is going on in this place?”
Licastro agreed. A makeover marrying the 1970s and Big Lebowski was overdue. And if it doesn’t work, say on the 91st day, then they would be ready, of course, to pivot Corner Alley in a different direction.
“We want to create spaces that outlive us,” Licastro said. “We don’t ever want to be so distant from our spaces that we don’t continue to breathe life into them.”
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Continuing to breathe that life requires dollars, of course. And its core investor group of four seems to be willing to toss money into the cause at Beudert’s beck and call.
“I trust him,” Terry Francona, the former Guardians manager and key Hangry backer, told me. “This is Jason’s life work and passion. Mine’s baseball. I don’t think anything’s a flash in the pan.”
And, according to Hangry Brands, what they’re doing is working, and allowing them to reinvest.
“Honestly, our deep pockets are coming from our own businesses,” Licastro, who helps Beudert scout locations with company president Chelsea Rice, told me. “We bring money in to help with opening capital. STEAK, Jolene’s, Society, Slice Shop, Lionheart. They’re all plugging away. They’re all profitable businesses.”
Profitable, Beudert said, partly because of geography. Almost all of Hangry’s spots are clustered downtown or in Tremont, a fact that allows staff to breezily go where needed, regardless of time, title, need or task.
“All our managers are cross-trained so that everyone’s helping each other out,” Beudert said. “So, our labor line goes down. Which means our efficiency scales. And then, of course, our profit is stronger.” So strong, Beudert said, that Hangry covered the $750,000 it used to build Jolene’s on East 4th in the first 90 days.
But Hangry’s efficiency isn’t without its thorns. Three past employees told Scene that they often worked more than 50 hours a week to either keep spots functional or help build out Hangry’s newest concept—spray-painting car tires, stapling turf—in the breakneck speed the company set out.
“They view burnout as a badge of honor,” one former staffer told Scene.
“You’re not allowed to be sick, you’re not allowed to have a life,” another said.
Some felt that lingering feeling of burnout could be alleviated if Hangry wasn’t so hungry. “They would actually be the best restaurant group in Cleveland if Jason took the time to maintain a location for at least a year before focusing on another,” a third said.
To those critiques, Beudert simply responds, “It’s a different intensity. And not everyone’s built for that.”
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There was no dispute that on a snowstorm-night in late January, Jolene’s Honky Tonk was the busiest bar on East 4th. Beudert and his wife were hosting a fundraiser for Workshop of Wishes, their charity that grants wishes to children diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses.
And it was a rowdy fundraiser at that. Upstairs, a trio of women in bejeweled cowboy hats craned their necks as a bartender poured fruity vodka into their mouths. Two women in flannels snapped selfies while seated on the bed of a prop Ford truck. Downstairs, the lead singer of Reckless Highway belted a post-punk version of 50 Cent’s “In da Club” in front of the two-story mural of Dolly Parton.
In the middle of the crowd, Beudert materialized in a red-and-black flannel shirt. He fist-bumped guests, asking, “You good, brother? You good?” He held out a trucker hat (Jolene’s merch) with “THE HELL I WON’T” to two women with perfect teeth. “I love this place,” one of them shouted. “I love how it has three floors!”
Women like them, and women in general, are a key demographic for Hangry — “I mean, it’s marketing 101,” Licastro said. “You market to women and children. And that’s what we do.” —and a key part of the company.
The entire leadership team, apart from Beudert, is female. All five of Hangry’s owner-operators are women, as are roughly 70 percent of its 300 employees. The company’s website, ads, social media and messaging all emphasize it. A script flip against, Beudert likes to say, an “industry dominated by men.” (“The future of Cleveland hospitality is female,” an Instagram post reads.)
“Seeking out women was never the intention,” said Chelsea Rice, the company’s president, who ran concessions at Progressive Field before Beudert hired her in 2023. Rice, who grew up selling candy at her mother’s soul food restaurant in Portsmouth, Ohio, said the women-run identity emerged more from circumstance than strategy.
“We look for the brightest and most creative talent, people who see the vibes we’re on,” Rice said. “And lucky for me, they just happened to be women.” She laughed. “Although, we’re not opposed to men! Don’t get me wrong!”
Ironically, for all its women-run branding, Hangry’s future is still tied to one man. At least for now. Beudert said he plans to step away in 2035, when he turns 60, and sell the company to whichever owner-operators remain. (Licastro and Rice both said they intend to.)
Who knows what the landscape will look like in 10 years. Maybe most of Hangry’s joints are still around at that point. Maybe most of them pivot to the whims of whatever social media exists then that doesn’t now. But given the alacrity with which Hangry has risen from nothing to where it stands today—and the unfailing belief from the team in charge—it’s hard to imagine Hangry disintegrating entirely.
In the meantime, despite criticisms, they’ve hit on something that’s working.
At the fundraiser in January, I asked a blonde mother of two in a cowboy hat what it was that she liked about Jolene’s. After downing a shot that arrives on an acoustic guitar, she smiled from under a cowboy hat and said, “My dude, I haven’t been out in six months.” Wiping a drop of vodka from her lips she went on. “I have two kids. This is way more fun than hanging out at a damn Walmart.”
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