Yellow Brick owners filling up entrepreneurial plate with new upscale dive bar

After opening a second location of Yellow Brick Pizza on King Avenue, owners Faith Pierce and Bobby Silver decided they wanted even more on their entrepreneurial plate and announced the opening of The Oracle in Old Towne East.

The new neighborhood bar will open May 23 and is located at 1159 Oak St. in Olde Towne East, very near the original Yellow Brick Pizza

While celebrations are in order, the road to get to today has more than a few wobbly bricks.

Before they became business partners, Pierce and Silver fell in love. They got married in 2010, and together they bought Yellow Brick the following year.

Then Silver went on tour, traveling the world playing bass for the rapper Blueprint. Pierce stayed home to manage the restaurant. It wasn’t a recipe for a successful marriage.

The pressure and the distance proved too much, and they divorced.

You might expect such a seismic event to sever their business partnership, too. But, you’d be wrong.

While the split introduced a host of new challenges, they stuck it out.

“A lot of people get an idea of what divorce is, and they hear horror stories,” Silver said. “But we get to decide what our relationships consist of. We’re a divorced couple who maintained our partnership.”

So as their relationship as business partners has grown, so has their business offerings.

Yellow Brick is thriving. And with the new location on King Avenue and The Oracle’s opening this month, they’re keeping busy.

They weren’t planning to open two new places in the span of a month. But in business as in life, things rarely go according to plan.

A few years ago, Pierce and Silver put themselves on a waiting list for a liquor license in Old Towne East. They figured they might be ready to open a new location by the time they got it. If not, they could sell it to someone else who needed it.

Before the liquor license came through, the King Avenue location came to their attention at a price that was too good to pass up. They locked it down and began turning it into the second Yellow Brick Pizza.

Amongst all the local art on the wall, you’ll notice a beautiful chandelier hanging above the entrance—Silver made it. If you look even closer, you’ll notice it’s made of translucent nunchucks.

It’s all part of the YB vibe.

Then, just as their liquor license was approved, a perfect location became available near the original Yellow Brick. They were swamped with both pizza joints but the opportunity was too good to pass up.

Enter, The Oracle.

“The Oracle is a hangout,” Silver said. “It’s basically an upscale dive bar. What we’re trying to do is get people back in the same room with each other. We want a lot of people with crazy-diverse backgrounds to come together and find common ground and understand each other.”

Can one bar help unite the country? Maybe it’s not a crazy idea. Change happens when people come together.

“As long as you’re not a dick, spitting hate speech, you should feel comfortable there,” Silver said. “That’s the America we really need.”

You know what? He’s not wrong.

By Chris Reed / (614) May 2018

BROUGHT TO YOU BY