A new downtown Columbus restaurant aims to serve more than just meals—it’s serving a movement. The team behind Café Overlook, a courthouse-based cafeteria known for its community-focused mission and workforce development model, is now preparing to open The Line, a new concept combining upscale dining with real-world hospitality training.
The Line will be located on Grant Avenue and serve as both a full-service restaurant and an innovation kitchen—a workforce development hub designed specifically for hospitality professionals looking to level up their careers. The concept is the latest venture from the Service! team, led by hospitality changemakers Sangeeta Lakhani, Letha Pugh, and Matthew Heaggans, whose work over the past few years has focused on rewriting the rules of an often overlooked and under-resourced industry.
After founding Service! in 2020 to support restaurant workers displaced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the trio has remained committed to tackling deeper industry issues—from wage inequality to lack of career mobility. Their previous venture, Café Overlook, continues to thrive inside the Franklin County Courthouse, offering low-cost meals made with local ingredients while training and employing workers, many of whom have faced personal or legal barriers to employment.
Now, The Line is being developed to address the next stage of those workers’ journeys. Unlike basic culinary job training programs, The Line’s Innovation Kitchen will offer paid, on-the-job upskilling opportunities for current hospitality workers. Whether it’s a bartender wanting to train as a sommelier or a line cook aspiring to run a kitchen, the program is designed to provide both the training and the support—like child care, transportation, and case management—needed to thrive.
The name “The Line” is a nod to the classic kitchen hierarchy, where the line is where the heat, pressure, and collaboration happen. But it’s also symbolic—a line in the sand between the way things have been and the way they could be.
With Columbus’ independent restaurant scene growing but still reliant on importing talent from larger markets, the team hopes to change that dynamic by investing in homegrown culinary professionals. “We don’t need to fly in chefs from New York or Chicago,” Lakhani has said. “We just need to give the people here a chance to rise.”
The Line is expected to open later this year, continuing Service!’s mission to reshape the hospitality world—one empowered worker at a time.
