This year, her family is celebrating 50 years of owning restaurants in the Dayton region. From The Barnsider in Harrison Twp. to The Wellington Grille in Beavercreek and currently Harrison’s Restaurant in Tipp City and The Blue Berry Cafe in Bellbrook and Kettering, their story centers around hard work and family.
“We’ve had restaurants in Dayton for 50 years,” Andary said. “That’s worth celebrating.”
From Canada to Dayton
Miller was born in Canton, China in 1941, moved to Hong Kong as a child and emigrated with her family to Canada.
“My grandmother (Nancy Jean) actually came before her, found a job (and) made some money,” Andary said. “They had very, very humble beginnings.”
Credit: Contributed Photo
Credit: Contributed Photo
Miller’s brother, Ray Jean, was born in Canada, where she helped her mother, who was a chambermaid at a hotel, raise him.
She got married to Andary’s father, Ken Seto, who was a chemical engineer, and moved to Dayton in the 1960s for his job.
Miller started working at a Chinese restaurant in Cincinnati where she learned how to perform every job in a restaurant.
Credit: Contributed Photo
Credit: Contributed Photo
She went on to open The Barnsider, a classic steakhouse, at 5202 N. Main St. in 1975. They were known for their bone-in prime rib, chops, fried shrimp and shrimp cocktail. Miller named The Barnsider after a restaurant in New York.
“My mom was really smart though because Chinese restaurants are a lot of work,” Andary said. “(With a steakhouse), the flat cost of it is higher, but the labor in it is not as high as a Chinese restaurant.”
Growing up at The Barnsider
Andary was 4-years old when her mom opened the restaurant. Some of her earliest memories include having her birthday parties there as a kid and going to the bank every day with her mom, while her sisters were in school.
Credit: Contributed Photo
Credit: Contributed Photo
In the 1980s, there was a fire at the restaurant. Andary said she remembers that year because it was the one year as a kid they got to go on vacation.
“When we had the fire, my mom knew she was going to rebuild,” Andary said. “Every restaurant and none of them are really around anymore... took in our staff.”
The Barnsider reopened almost a year after the fire with more seating capacity and more room for parties and groups. Out of 33 employees at the time of the fire, 30 returned.
Andary worked at the restaurant throughout high school and college. She graduated from Indiana University with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and communications, but decided to return to the restaurant industry in 1993.
Credit: Lisa Powell
Credit: Lisa Powell
Her mom had her learn how to do everything at the restaurant from serving and bartending to office work.
“We moved from the Clayton/Englewood area in the ‘90s to Beavercreek and in ‘98 opened The Wellington Grille,” Andary said. “For my mom and my uncle I think it was a dream to have two restaurants.”
Making a dream come true
The Wellington Grille was more upscale compared to The Barnsider. The restaurant had a chef and offered fresh-baked bread service.
The Beavercreek restaurant, located at 2450 Dayton-Xenia Road, was named after the street Miller and Jean grew up on in Ontario, Canada.
Credit: Jim Witmer
Credit: Jim Witmer
“Wellington Street was just a very humble place for them,” Andary said.
She remembers helping her mom and uncle open The Wellington in her late 20s, but her main job was at The Barnsider.
“(My mom) always had the final say on anything, but I always made sure I asked her. I still do,” Andary said.
Her mom stayed at the front of the house and her uncle was in the back of the house at their restaurants. Andary said Jean’s culinary career started at Bill Knapp’s in Trotwood where he was a server.
The early days of The Blue Berry Cafe
Jean moved to Bellbrook in the early 2000s and saw that the former home of The Blue Berry Cafe at 72 Bellbrook Plaza was up for auction. He always wanted to own a sports bar-like restaurant with wings, but there were already several wing and pizza places in Bellbrook.
“I really loved Coldwater Cafe,” Andary said. “I wanted a place like that. It was total opposite of what my uncle wanted.”
Credit: Contributed Photo
Credit: Contributed Photo
They ended up going into business together and opened The Blue Berry in 2004.
Outside inspiration
“My inspiration for The Blue Berry’s menu was First Watch and Coldwater Cafe,” Andary said. “I just wanted a place where, like, ladies go, because at the time I didn’t work in the daytime. I only worked at night, so to have a place to go that was cute ...”
The menu and name of the cafe stems from a time where her stepfather, Bob Miller, was going through cancer treatments and the Atkins diet was popular.
“We didn’t know how to do breakfast,” Andary said. “It wasn’t something we knew anything about.”
They scrambled to open the cafe for the Sugar Maple Festival with lunch food that was familiar to those that had dined at The Barnsider.
Credit: Contributed Photo
Credit: Contributed Photo
Adding a fourth restaurant to the portfolio
At this point, Andary was working at The Blue Berry and The Barnsider, while her mom was at The Wellington and her uncle was ordering for all three restaurants.
“My mom comes to me and says her accountant in Tipp City wants to look at this restaurant,” Andary said.
She recalled telling her mom not to do it because at that time they lived in Beavercreek, which was almost 40 minutes away, but she decided to do it anyways.
Two weeks before they opened Harrison’s at 106 E. Main St. in 2005, her stepfather died.
“I ended up really loving it, but it was really hard in the beginning (because she was grieving the death of her stepfather),” Andary said.
Harrison’s is named after President William Henry Harrison, which is who Tipp City is named after. The restaurant offers American fare.
Andary ran Harrison’s from 2005 to 2014. From 2008 to 2014, she also owned Urban Ava’s in Tipp City, a boutique with eclectic items, clothing, jewelry and Vera Bradley.
“I love the restaurant business, but I was getting burned out and opening the store was my little outlet,” Andary said.
Making changes
After running four restaurants for just more than 10 years, Miller decided to close The Barnsider in 2016. At the time of the closing, Miller told this news outlet that the sale would allow her to spend more time with her family and to focus on her other restaurants.
“It was just time, I think,” Andary said.
The Barnsider was once operating until 1 a.m., but over the years they had to change closing time to 8:30-9 p.m. to make sure their staff was safe.
In 2018, Andary returned to The Blue Berry Cafe because her uncle was diagnosed with cancer. That’s when things started to change.
“Once I learned how to cook, there was a sense of empowerment,” Andary said.
Two years later, the family faced the coronavirus pandemic.
“The hardest thing for the dinner restaurants was staffing,” Andary said.
Up until then, their restaurants had all been open seven days a week. They started closing on Mondays to give themselves a break.
The Wellington Grille ended up closing in 2022 after grappling with staffing shortages, food shortages and price increases.
“It’s just much harder to do business with no help and then things are so expensive,” Miller said at the time.
Andary thinks it was hard to operate The Wellington during Covid because it was a special occasion restaurant and most people didn’t want to get a $30 steak to-go.
Credit: Contributed Photo
Credit: Contributed Photo
An exciting year for The Blue Berry Cafe
2024 was an exciting year for The Blue Berry Cafe.
The restaurant’s long-term lease at 72 Bellbrook Plaza ended Dec. 31, 2023 and they needed to vacate the space by Jan. 31, 2024.
“That little space (was) great, but it wasn’t meant to do the volume that we had it doing,” Andary said.
The Bellbrook cafe moved and reopened its doors at 129 W. Franklin St. in downtown Bellbrook across from Dot’s Market in April 2024.
Credit: Natalie Jones
Credit: Natalie Jones
In addition to the move, The Blue Berry Cafe opened a second location in the former space of the Golden Nugget Pancake House at 2932 S. Dixie Drive in Kettering with the help of Winsupply Inc., a Moraine-based company that purchased the site in October 2023.
“In 20 years, I would never think to open a second Blue Berry,” Andary said. “I liked routine. I liked what we had.”
The Kettering restaurant opened in February 2024. Andary described the partnership with Winsupply as “winning the restaurant lottery.”
Credit: Natalie Jones
Credit: Natalie Jones
“Our goal is to make our landlords very happy. They’ve taken very good care of us and given this gift of a second business that we would never of even dreamt to be able to do,” Andary said. “This kind of thing just doesn’t really happen to people like us.”
It’s more than breakfast
Andary does not have plans to open additional Blue Berry Cafe locations. Instead, she wants to do more in the community by donating to charities and being more present.
During her family’s 50th anniversary, she plans to give back to the community through a donation day or a work-related/industry event once a month.
At 9 a.m. Monday, April 14, she wants to show her appreciation to other Dayton restaurant owners by inviting them to breakfast to “break bread.”
There will be several “Eat Good While We Do Good” events throughout the year where a portion of sales will be donated to a local charity.
“I think people want to know that their money is going to more things than just breakfast,” Andary said.
Sharing knowledge with her team
Andary attributes a lot of what she knows to her mother and uncle.
“She let me do my own thing here. She let me shine here,” Andary said. “I know that was hard because I was the person that was running her restaurants. Everything I learned about customer service, quality, I learned from her. I do try to pass that along to my staff and cross train.”
Her mom had a mentor from the Toledo area that helped her open The Barnsider. He had owned Eddie Lee’s in west Toledo.
Andary described her mom as being the “ultimate host.”
“She has a very good, honest reputation of being caring about her staff as best as she can,” Andary said.
The Blue Berry Cafe has around 60 employees that Andary cares about deeply.
“I think it’s important to show appreciate to these people that are working their butts off,” Andary said. “Being constructive and being critical are the two ways of giving criticism. Constructive will get you much further than critical.”
Jean has taught Andary everything she knows in the kitchen.
Miller and Jean are the owners of Harrison’s and Andary and Jean own the Blue Berry Cafes.
Miller continues to be involved in the restaurant by welcoming guests at the door and helping her team figure our menu specials. Jean continues to order for all three restaurants and helps with any big projects.
“I love the customers,” Andary said. “I love it when they’re happy. I love when what we do can make someone’s day.”
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