See How Hey Nonny Transforms Their Space with A Skyfold Wall
Modernfold Chicago’s Ryan Watson caught up with Chip from Hey Nonny to learn how their innovative Skyfold vertical folding wall helps them get the most out of their space. It allows them to seamlessly switch between intimate dining, live music and special events. In this video, Chip shares how flexibility, great acoustics and creative design all come together to create a unique venue in Arlington Heights.
Transcript
Ryan: Hey, Chip.
Chip: Hey, Ryan.
Ryan: How’s it going?
Chip: Everything is good.
Ryan: Awesome, man. Well, hey, thank you very much for having us out. You’ve got an awesome venue here, awesome establishment. So just wanted to kind of chat with you, catch up a little bit about your space, how you use it. You know, we’ve got a really cool Skyfold system behind us that you guys are able to use for some flexibility with your space just would you mind sharing a little bit about kind of the concept of how you came up with being able to subdivide the bar and the type of space that you use.
Chip: Sure, we’ve got sort of a small amount of space here and we wanted to jam into our small amount of space both a music venue and room for drinking and dining. And so it was hard to figure out how to do that. And so we knew we were going to have to have two rooms, but because our venue is really small, we wanted to provide the ability to open up the venue to this other room if we could. So we wanted to be closed sometimes, but open some other times. And the answer to that was a moveable wall. So we called you.
Ryan: Excellent. Now I know early on during some of our conversations we looked at some horizontal folding systems across the bar, vertically folding systems. What kind of, for the vertical standpoint, did that give you guys any better benefits you think over the horizontal systems that probably have like a storage pocket?
Chip: As I recall it was again a space issue. Like we didn’t have room on the sides to store a wall. We figured that there was room in the ceiling, so we chose that.
Ryan: Okay, excellent. As far as the acoustics, separating the two rooms, I know on the opposite side, you guys have it more as a music venue, live music, and on this side, the bistro side, it’s more of a private dining. But then you can open the wall up to allow a little larger space for the music scene.
Chip: It was important to us, and we talked to you about that when we were looking at the wall to have it be acoustically sound so that the sound would not flow from the venue into the bistro room here. Some of our music over there is quiet, but some of it’s loud. And we didn’t want the diners in here to be experiencing it without paying for it.
Ryan: Fair enough. Now, if you had any fun, what are some of your more memorable experiences as far as bands and music artists that have come through.
Chip: And by the way, the acoustical properties of the wall work.
Ryan: Excellent.
Chip: You told me they would, but they actually did. No, so we’ve had a lot of really widely different kinds of bands in here from very quiet, as I say, bands, to really, really loud, aggressive rock and roll. But I think my favorite one is, I said Miles Nielsen and The Rusted Hearts, a band from Rockford. Miles Nielsen is the son of Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick, but Miles is a tremendous musician, a tremendous songwriter, and he puts his band together with such care, there’s such beautiful playing and interplay in the bandmembers. So we love them.
Ryan: As far as the dining experience, how did you guys kind of go about that? Is it mostly local or where do you guys kind of come up with the ideas for the food concepts?
Chip: What we wanted to do something when we were opening that something that was different than everything else that’s in Arlington Heights, you know, so we had Thai restaurants and Mexican restaurants, we have a barbecue place, you know, we’ve got sports bars with sports bar kind of food, we have an Irish bar, So, we wanted to do something a little different, so we decided to try to do something sort of a little upscale comfort food, so we call it Midwest Bistro food. So it’s got kind of some international influences, but it’s always supposed to be food that’s a little bit familiar, but a little bit interesting and a cut above your bar food kind of a situation.
Ryan: Okay, excellent.
Chip: So it’s worked out well.
Ryan: And you guys have been in business since 2018?
Chip: 2018. October 17th, 2018. I remember it.
Ryan: Of course. And how did you come up with the concept of Hey Nonny? Was it a combination between yourself and Chris?
Chip: Yeah, we both wanted to have a music venue. And in Arlington Heights, we don’t have bars, we have only restaurants. So to have a liquor license you have to serve food or at least you used to in the old days. So we knew we needed to have both a music venue and a restaurant. And that’s how we sort of came up with it. But our goal was originally always, you know, the music was our focus. We figured with the restaurant if we were going to have a restaurant, it should be a good one, you know, we wanted it to be high quality and interesting and engaging. So for the most part, I think we’ve gotten there. I think we’re the highest rated restaurant in the Northwest suburbs on OpenTable, so people like it.
Ryan: How do you guys tend to utilize the wall? Is it something you see daily, weekly, as far as the flexibility?
Chip: Yeah, most of the time, we have the wall down, as you see it here. And our drinking and dining operations in here are totally separate from our music venue operations. But there are times when we have the wall open, like last night we had rock and roll bingo here. So we had people sitting on both sides to do the bingo and the wall was up for that, obviously. And then sometimes we do shows where, as I say, we want to have a larger capacity. And so we have the wall up for that but then that sacrifices our, we can’t do our drinking and dining on that it just has to be the show. So we have the wall up for that and that increases our capacity. So we’ve done some really fun shows like that so it’s actually you know the flexibility has been as we hoped it would be. That’s really a great thing.
Ryan: Awesome. Well one of the other things that you kind of showed us earlier which I thought was really cool. I’ve seen the walls used as projection surfaces before, but usually it’s with kind of in combination of like a marker board surface. So obviously here we just have the unfinished steel kind of exposed, gives it kind of a unique look, but it worked out really, really well with some of the projection screens you guys have.
Chip: We’ve got three short throw projectors up above us on the bar here and so we can put three different signals, three different pictures onto the wall here. We do mostly TV right now, but we’re putting in a new system where we’re going to be able to take videos from our shows in our venue and put that up and also do some advertising and promotion of upcoming shows. So we’ll de-emphasize TV and more emphasize the music.
Ryan: Now have any of, I guess, your customers or any of the musicians, have they been able to experience kind of the wall coming up or coming down. And kind of get any reaction from them on like because most people, I assume just view it as a static part of the space.
Chip: Yeah most of the time the wall is going up or coming down before anybody is here so most of the time people don’t see it. But we’ve definitely had occasions where, you know, what do we do, oh I know, we had a political event here on election night, where we had an election night party for the guy that is now elected, the mayor-elect of Arlington Heights. And his party started out in this room because we had a show in the other room, but as soon as the show was over, we were going to move the election party into there so that the winner could get up on stage and give a speech. So while the party’s going on, we took the wall up. You know, people were pretty amazed by that. People think of it just as a static wall, and so they’re always surprised. If they’re used to it in this format, they’re surprised when it’s open, or if they’re used to it open, they’re surprised when it’s closed. It’s fun.
Ryan: Awesome. So have you found it beneficial to your business as far as how it works and operates?
Chip: Yeah, the flexibility has been great for us. It’s what we wanted to have happen, and you know, what you want to have happen doesn’t always work out the way you envision it. But in this case, it really did work out the way we envisioned it. And it’s given us flexibility to take our small space and have it do a bunch of different things.
Ryan: Awesome. Well, I appreciate the time today. Thank you so much, Chip.
Chip: All right, thank you.