Rye, a restaurant that has been a staple in downtown McKinney since 2018, is closed indefinitely after a fire broke out in the alley behind it on Monday, Aug. 15.
Owner Tanner Agar shared pictures of the heavily damaged building on Instagram Friday that show the charred husk of the back of the building with melted bottles, warped storage racks and mounds of burned debris in the kitchen.
“In 8th grade I read How to Run a Restaurant for Dummies and I decided to commit my life to being a restaurateur. I got work visas for new countries, worked 80 hour weeks, and gave up everything to finally become one by opening Rye. On Monday I watched that dream literally burn down,” he said in the post. “But Rye is not a building, and a dream is not combustible.”
The McKinney Fire Department responded to the alley fire around 10:30 a.m. Monday. Other businesses nearby were slightly damaged by the flames, but Rye experienced the most destruction, a spokesperson for the department said. A cause has yet to be determined and the fire is still under investigation.
Here's the latest on the downtown McKinney fire. Firefighters arrived to find a fire in a courtyard behind businesses on Kentucky St. Everyone was evacuated safely. The flames charred the outside walls and caused some interior damage at Rye. The cause is still being determined. pic.twitter.com/yV4MJ5FmOf
— mckinneyfire (@mckinneytxfire) August 15, 2022
Rye, which has a second location on Lower Greenville that opened last year, is known for its creative seasonal menus and locally sourced ingredients.
Agar told The Dallas Morning News that the fire happened on the one day of the week that the restaurant is closed, so there was no staff there at the time the fire broke out. He got a call from someone with the City of McKinney Monday morning who told him that Rye was on fire and to get to the restaurant.
“That was the longest commute of my life wondering what ‘Rye is on fire’ meant as I drove over there,” he said. “Was the whole thing on fire? Was just the garden on fire? I didn’t know what I was going to find.”
When he arrived, he found that the front of the building and dining room eerily look like nothing happened, but half of the kitchen was burned out and hardly recognizable. Officials with the fire department told him to not expect to reopen until next year considering the extent of the damage.
He’s not sure when Rye will reopen, but he is certain there will once again be a Rye restaurant in McKinney, even if it’s not in the same location.
“I’ve had to accept that Rye is not going to be operating in McKinney until next year,” he said. “But my priority is my people. I have to keep my people working, the people who rely on this place for their paychecks.”
In the meantime, he has moved some of the McKinney staff over to the Dallas restaurant and is toying with the idea of operating a pop up concept or something similar in McKinney until the restaurant can reopen.
Agar created a GoFundMe account to raise funds for the restaurant’s rebuild.
Rye is located at 111 W. Virginia St., McKinney. ryemckinney.com.
