We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brian + Alexa Beechler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brian + Alexa below.

Alright, Brian + Alexa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Brian has worked in the service industry all of his life, getting to learn from some of the best chefs and restauranteurs that San Diego has to offer. The idea for Off the Vine Dining began after Brian started serving food for the worship and production team at his local church. A few months later, he felt called to start a catering company, so he did, and it began to grow quickly!

Serving others really good food is how we show our love for people. And after years of serving others around the county of San Diego, we longed for the opportunity to show our love to our local community. We longed for a way to bring our neighbors together to make memories with each other and their loved ones over a delicious handmade meal under the Ramona country sky. And this is how the idea for our Friday Night Outdoor BBQ’s began!

In 2023, we decided to open up our grounds to the public. We wanted a place where all generations could gather, laugh, have fun, and enjoy delicious food. After building some picnic tables and painting them, we were officially ready to begin to welcome our community. Over time we have added fresh flowers, bunnies, a sandbox, a game center, a smore’s station, and a shaded area for our fellow community to enjoy. What keeps us excited and doing this every week is getting to meet our neighbors, watching their smiles as they enjoy our food and letting their children play on our grounds. It fills our hearts and reminds us about the importance of community and doing life with other people. Joy is contagious and it is definitely present at our BBQ’s!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Brian has worked in the service industry since he was 16, and I (Alexa) was a teacher, so we inherently love serving people well. But it wasn’t until we had our sweet daughter Harper in 2020 that we began to realize the value of making food from scratch, eating clean ingredients, and the importance of knowing who made your food. After facing various health challenges, I began to realize that some of the foods I was enjoying was actually making me sick, so I made a shift and commitment to my household- make things by hand when possible and only serve clean ingredients at our dinner table. And it is this commitment that is the foundation of our company- food integrity. We make our sauces, salsas, spices, caramels, desserts, and much more by hand and use only clean ingredients when we prepare food-free from food dyes, seed oils, metals, and carcinogens. In 2024, we even launched our own seasoning & rubs collection, these are our original recipes that we use at home and with all of the meat that we serve to our clients.

We serve you what we eat at our own dinner table and even serve it alongside fresh flowers (because fresh florals can help reduce stress and anxiety, promoting joyful emotions and we want everyone to feel joy and deliciousness when they dine with us)! After the health battles I faced, I learned a lot about the food industry and how it can make you sick if you don’t know what you are putting in your body. So with every meal we prepare we do it with integrity from the ingredients we choose to the method by which we prepare it. We also have perfected several family recipes that are now beloved by our clients today, from our cupcakes, meats, sauces, breads, and ice cream, we seek to serve our clients as if they are sitting around our dinner table with us.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Brian and I met at his coffee shop in North Park, San Diego. It was called Grinds and Vine. I was a teacher at the time and went in to do some grading and it happened to be slow that day in his shop. I was new to San Diego and new to his shop, so he recommended I try his Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich along with his handmade cold brew (cold brew was like an up and coming thing in SD apparently). I instantly was hooked and began coming back weekly to enjoy that special treat! He sourced a special peanut butter from Pacific Beach and made his own jam by hand. One day he offered to take me on a tour of San Diego and I agreed. The rest is history after that! Little did I know that Brian serving me on that fateful day would be something we would get to do together, and now as a family! Our sweet Harper helps us a lot! She can bake scones, season meats like a pro, and serve others with joy-and she is only 3 1/2!

Any advice for managing a team?

Our best advice is to love the people you work with and know that you are serving them. There is no leadership without a team, so the team is the most important part of any business. We genuinely spend time with our team, love them, respect them, serve them, and truly would do anything for anyone of them. I believe it is our love for them that maintains high morale. We know that without them, we would not be able to do what we do. Life is never meant to be lived alone, it is meant to be lived with community, and our team is our community. It is a high honor of ours to have the caliber of teammates that we have serving alongside us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.offthevinedining.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/offthevinedining/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/offthevinedining
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/off-the-vine-dining-ramona

Image Credits

Just taken by us, no special credits