"I'm not a classically trained chef, but I make amazing food that makes people feel good." That's what Tyler Williams told the Indianapolis Recorder the week he opened The Besties' Table on Shelby Street, in the kind of building most drivers on that stretch had stopped noticing years ago. Seven weeks later, Indianapolis Business Journal was describing the same address as a culinary hot spot. Seven weeks. If you live anywhere near the University of Indianapolis, you've probably already sat in that line, or driven past it wondering what changed.
Here's what's easy to miss if you only clocked the restaurant news: a few blocks away, at the corner of State Street and East Hanna Avenue, Perry Township Schools and UIndy just announced a $30 million building that won't open until the 2028-29 school year. Two very different timelines, two very different price tags, and they're both betting on the exact same idea: that this particular stretch of Perry Township, once easy to drive past without a second look, is worth building something permanent on.
A 1,900-Square-Foot Bet That Paid Off Fast
The building at 4022 Shelby Street has seen its share of restaurants come and go. Jailbird ran the bar and restaurant concept there from 2019 to 2022. Open Kitchen followed from 2023 to 2025. When Williams went looking for his first brick-and-mortar space, that same 1,900-square-foot building checked three boxes on his list: small enough to manage, an overhead garage door for indoor-outdoor seating, and a liquor license already in place so mimosas could go straight on the menu.
Williams isn't new to feeding people. He grew up in Haughville, raised by a single mother who fostered his love of cooking, and graduated from Cardinal Ritter High School before studying tourism and hospitality at IUPUI. He built his catering business, Cooking Besties, out of his mother's kitchen during the pandemic, and by 2021 he had landed a standout gig: 800 charcuterie boxes for Eskenazi Hospital as an employee-appreciation order. From there the client list grew to include Pacers Sports & Entertainment, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Nike, and Cummins. Between 2022 and 2025, he worked out of the Melon Kitchen accelerator at AMP food hall in the 16 Tech innovation district, a program run by the Be Nimble Foundation to support Black and Latinx-owned start-ups.
None of that guaranteed a restaurant would work on a corner south of Hanna Avenue and west of the UIndy campus. But according to Williams, the first week of business at The Besties' Table beat his sales projections before he'd even completed a full seven days of service. The restaurant now serves breakfast and brunch from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday, painted yellow on the outside with live plants filling the interior. If you've been calling ahead for a table on a Saturday, you already know why.
The Bigger Bet, Three Blocks Away
While Williams was building a following one plate at a time, Perry Township Schools was finalizing plans for something considerably larger. On July 29, 2026, district officials and UIndy announced construction would begin this fall on a 52,150-square-foot Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center at 3949 S. State Ave, on the current site of the Ron and Laura Strain Honors College. UIndy will relocate that college to make room. The project is funded in large part by a $40 million grant Perry Township Schools received from the Lilly Endowment in December 2025 through its Marion County K-12 Public Schools Initiative.
The two projects don't share an address, but they share a logic. Both are wagers that foot traffic and daily life around this corridor are only going to get denser, not thinner. Williams proved the smaller version of that bet with real customers in real time. The school district is now proving the larger version with a building that won't open its doors for two more school years.
| The Besties' Table | Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 4022 Shelby St. | 3949 S. State Ave. |
| Scale | 1,900 sq ft | 52,150 sq ft |
| Funding | Owner-financed, built on catering revenue | $40M Lilly Endowment grant (Dec. 2025) |
| Opened / breaks ground | March 28, 2026 | Fall 2026 groundbreaking |
| Full operation | Already at capacity most weekends | Targeted for 2028-29 school year |
What the Building Will Actually Do
Until construction finishes, the program isn't waiting around. Southport and Perry Meridian High School students started the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program on July 29, 2026, the first day of the school year, working out of temporary space in Martin Hall on UIndy's campus. Each class pairs about 15 students with an instructor, and the program connects them with real businesses to solve actual operating problems rather than hypothetical case studies.
Program Director Brian Bulmer named three of the local partners students will work alongside:
- Keep Rolling Mobility
- Mally Coffee Roasters
- Endress+Hauser, a Greenwood-based manufacturer
That's a small coffee roaster, a mobility company, and an industrial manufacturer all in the same rotation, which tells you the program isn't narrowing students toward one kind of career. It's throwing them at whatever problems south-side businesses are actually dealing with this year.
One detail from the announcement stands out if you've ever wondered what it's like to watch a neighborhood name itself: Bulmer said one of the first assignments for these students will be to name, brand, and market the building they're temporarily borrowing space to build toward. The architect on record is Indianapolis-based Lancer Associates Architecture, and the finished center will include classrooms, makerspaces, collaborative studios, and co-working space designed for students to design, prototype, test, and pitch ideas before the building even has teenagers helping decide what to call it.
Same Corridor, Two Very Different Clocks
If you've lived near UIndy for a while, you know this stretch hasn't always drawn attention. The Besties' Table building cycled through two prior tenants in six years before Williams found something that stuck. The honors college site at State and Hanna has been exactly that, a college building, without much reason for anyone outside campus to think about it.
What changes both properties at once isn't a single announcement. It's the fact that a chef with no restaurant experience and a school district with an eight-figure endowment grant landed on the same conclusion within months of each other: this corridor is worth investing in right now, at very different speeds and very different scales. One bet paid off in seven weeks. The other won't finish paying off until 2028-29, when the first classes actually occupy the building.
For anyone who eats breakfast on Shelby Street or drives past State and Hanna on the way to work, the practical effect is already visible. More cars looking for parking on weekend mornings. More foot traffic between the restaurant and campus. And starting this fall, actual construction equipment on a lot that's sat quiet for years. Two clocks, ticking at different speeds, both pointed along the same corridor.
If you're curious what else is happening on the south side of the corridor, or want to know what a corner like this looks like once the building's finished, that's the kind of neighborhood-level detail worth watching for. Perry Township keeps proving it's not standing still, one Saturday brunch line and one groundbreaking at a time.
Have questions about what's happening in your corner of Perry Township, or just want to talk shop about the south side? Angi Oakes would love to connect. Let's Connect — get a free home valuation or start your home search today.
