We recently connected with Edward Gaughan and have shared our conversation below.

Edward, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I have owned and operated several business in and around Ohio State University for almost 30 year. Over that time frame we have become very integrated with the university community. The opportunity to open a restaurant/bar entertainment venue across the street from a Ohio State Stadium and the Schottenstein Center was something we couldn’t pass up. It took several years from the planning stage to get to where we are now. The strategy was to take the food concept of wood fired pizza and some upscale bar food and bring it this new location along with all the relationships that we have had from our history here in the OSU community. Some of things that we were most excited about was the opportunity to paly a role in buckeye fans gameday traditions and the chance to introduce ourselves to faculty and staff that may not have visited our previous locations. This pass year has been one of growing our past relationship and starting new ones.

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?

I came to Columbus in 1994 after graduate school at Ohio University. I opened my first bar on South Campus “Sloopy’s Buckeye Club”. The first thing we learned was that in order to be successful you need to be part of the community. As we met groups and individuals associated with the University our business’ began to grow. The things that I am most proud of our the long standing relationships my family and I have with other business members, faculty, staff and student that have been around and are part of this community. There are students who graduated from when we first started that now have kids attending OSU and have come back in to remanis of their years as student.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

From a resilience stand point, one of the first challenges I had to endure was the whole remake of south campus and what is now call “The Gateway”. in the late 90’s I had 2 bars there and Ohio State and through eminent domain bought up all the property and forced myself and several other business’s out. This forced me to keep taking chances and move forward with opening few other bars/restaurant in the campus area (because tis was the market I knew best) So I bought the old “Flying Tomatoes” on 15th and high change the name to “Four Kegs Bar and Grill” (for 5 years) and then eventually remodeled and it became “The O Patio and Pub”. I eventually took over my neighbors place and built “The I Bar” we were there for about 20 years and again the University came and took the property which motivated me to “The O Patio and Pub ” on Lane Ave.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We built our reputation for being part of the community by getting involved with as many groups as we could and respecting those relationships.

Contact Info:

• Website: theoonlane.com
• Instagram: The O on Lane
• Facebook: The O on Lane
• Linkedin: Edward Gaughan
• Twitter: The O on Lane
• Yelp: The O on Lane

Image Credits
Alice Gaughan