This exclusive story appeared first in the Oct. 7 edition of “Family Meal,” our Tuesday evening dining newsletter written by Editor in Chief and Senior Dining Editor Beth McKibben. Subscribe for free here.
A second location of Virginia-Highland butcher shop and market Kinship will open at the Beacon in Grant Park next fall.
Kinship will take over an unoccupied retail spot next door to the former Elsewhere Brewing, which closed last year at the Grant Park complex.
The expansion into Grant Park will triple Kinship’s operation, allowing owners Chef Myles Moody and Rachael Pack to build upon its whole-animal butchery production, add a seafood butchery program, and provide more room to stock market shelves with seasonal produce, wine, and local pantry goods.
Most significantly, however, the Grant Park location will include a full-service cafe serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner and a bar offering beer, wines by the glass, and cocktails. (In Virginia-Highland, Kinship has become known for its breakfast sandwiches.) Moody’s brother, Connan, owns and operates Academy Coffee at Kinship and will oversee both coffee and cocktails in Grant Park.
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For Moody and his brother, Grant Park is familiar territory, having grown up in neighboring Ormewood Park to the east. Five generations of their family have also lived in Ormewood Park.
Moody and Pack, who are married and now live in Ormewood Park, said they’re banking on foot traffic at the Beacon from the surrounding neighborhoods and the Southside Beltline.
“This is another hub of community. We walk the Beltline all the time through the neighborhood. It’s how we spend our free time,” Pack said. “We are really excited to dive into another neighborhood and another creative community.”
With a full kitchen and an a.m. prep team, the cafe at Kinship will open early in the morning for breakfast and coffee. Expect a similar menu of breakfast sandwiches here from Moody and his team, along with sides of hash browns and granola and yogurt with seasonal fruits and berries.
Lunch will begin around 11 a.m., with seasonal salads and sandwiches, before shifting to heartier fare later in the afternoon. Dinner will showcase meats and seafood from the butcher counter at Kinship. Expect a menu of around 12 a la carte dishes, including starters and oysters, seasonal vegetables and mains of fish and meat, and a small selection of desserts. The bar will open at lunchtime, with Connan Moody creating a tight list of cocktails. Most of Kinship’s seating in Grant Park will be outside on the covered patio.
Moody gets excited when he talks about the butchery program at Kinship, especially the potential for growth in Grant Park.
The new location will feature a cutting room, something Kinship lacks in Virginia-Highland. Having more space for curing and sausage production, hanging racks, and whole-animal breakdown, means Moody can install a proper roasting oven and steam kettle for making stocks and soup broths.
New to Kinship, the Grant Park location will feature seafood butchery. Moody will continue Kinship’s dedication to sustainability and zero waste through its seafood offerings at the Beacon.
“We’ll source seafood predominantly from the Southeast, whether that be the Atlantic – Brunswick or Savannah in Georgia – or the Gulf of Mexico – Florida and Alabama,” Moody said. “It’s about educating people [on using different parts of fish], like the cheeks of a fish are edible or utilizing the bones to make stock or fish sauce.”
To start, Kinship will open Wednesday through Sunday in Grant Park. Hours will eventually expand to six days a week. Kinship will maintain that schedule for at least a year before opening daily, giving the couple and their staff time to adjust to running two locations and to understand the wants and needs of the neighborhood.
Events like barbecues, Fourth of July cookouts, and wine tastings, which Pack describes as more of a party atmosphere in Virginia-Highland, will play a big part in the community engagement aspect at Kinship in Grant Park.
“We want our neighbors to support us just as much as we want to support them,” Pack said.
This summer, Moody and Pack debuted a twice-monthly, chefs counter pop-up in Virginia-Highland. Called k|n, the four-seat, 12-course tasting menu, led by Moody, provides people an intimate dinner experience with wine pairings from Pack. It’s a chance to meet and converse more personally with their customers, Moody said, while showcasing the mission behind what they do every day at Kinship.
Reservations booked up quickly through the end of the year. After December, k|n will go on hiatus for the entirety of January. Moody and Pack plan to do a complete post-mortem on k|n and explore how to fine-tune the dinner experience in the future.
But, they don’t foresee launching k|n in Grant Park.
“The question really becomes how far, how big we go [with k|n],” said Moody. “I would love to have a fine dining restaurant some day, given my background, but that’s a lot easier said than done.”
Moody previously worked for Chef Linton Hopkins (Holeman & Finch, Restaurant Eugene), as well as at Eleven Madison Park, Atera, and Aska in New York City. Pack worked as a food writer, then as a sommelier at the Beatrice Inn. She later worked as the beverage manager at Aska, where she met Moody.
The couple struck out on their own in 2021, opening Kinship Butcher & Sundry in the renovated VA-HI building, also home to Paolo’s Gelato and Pielands Pizza and Subs.
Other than splitting their time between two Kinship locations next fall, Moody and Pack said little will change at the shop in Virginia-Highland.
“We’re committed to exceptionalism in both spaces and we’ve cultivated a great team, some of whom have been with us since we opened the original location,” Moody said, noting that Kinship’s main butcher has been with them since the beginning. “A lot of our team will stay on at the original location and some of them will straddle both locations and some of them might move to the second location.”
Kinship Butcher & Sundry will open in the fall of 2026 at 1039 Grant St., Grant Park.