225 Years of Helping Hartford Businesses: Red Rock Tavern

This year, the Hartford Chamber of Commerce turns 225 years old. We turned to the community to speak with businesses both longstanding and new to the scene to learn more about their history and relationship with the Chamber. Below is a truncated interview with Digital Marketing Manager Jenn Accuosti and Chelsey Mancini, manager of Red Rock Tavern, located at 369 Capitol Avenue in Hartford.

Chelsey Mancini, manager at Red Rock Tavern

Thanks for speaking with me today, Chelsey. I wanted to start with a brief introduction of you, your history with the business, and your current role at Red Rock.

Currently I'll say manager, but I’m wearing a lot of hats outside of that traditional title. My dad currently owns the business, and I've been here since I was a kid. I’ve spent college summers waitressing, serving, things like that, and I took a more formal senior management position in the last four years.

My dad has been here since he was a little kid. Before him, my great uncle had owned Red Rock. It was formerly called Kenney's Restaurant. And then before him was another great uncle, and he was the originator in our family for the restaurant. So he brought our family over. They immigrated from Italy in the early 1960s. They came over, and he had purchased this restaurant from an Irish family, the Kenney family. So this was called Kenney's restaurant when it opened in the 1930s all the way up until about 2005 when we rebranded to Red Rock Tavern. So we've been here since the late sixties.

Wow, so a longstanding family business.

Yeah, I call myself fourth-generation. In its heyday it was aunts, uncles, you know, cousins, nieces, nephews, kids. My great-grandmother was here, she worked in the kitchen until she was about in her mid-nineties I wanna say.

And it started in 1933, before your family owned it, so this restaurant has been around for almost a century.

Yeah, it started in 1933 by the Kenney family, and there is a lot of cool history here, like my uncle was told, back when we were buying the business from them, that there used to be a speakeasy during prohibition in our basement. And then I guess probably a more relevant fact, like a history piece of it, is why we shifted from Kenney's Restaurant to Red Rock Tavern.

Exterior view of Red Rock Tavern

We were rebranding around 2005, and there's a historically preserved advertisement on the side of the building. And you can't, you know, really do anything with it, so kind of as a nod to the history and the advertisement here we renamed it Red Rock Tavern after the soda. It’s still distributed, it’s very popular down south, but there were more distribution centers up here in the Hartford area. That sign actually used to exist in other neighborhoods too.

And you’ve always been at this location, right?

Yes. We've always been here on this corner. It's really never been a thought otherwise to be anywhere else. We stumbled upon this when my great uncle had purchased it and kind of fell in love with the neighborhood and the people since, and we've really watched the city grow through time.

I wanted to ask why your family started the business, especially since you’ve been in Hartford the whole time. What is it about the city that inspired you to stay?

When my family came over from Italy, the restaurant was up for sale, and they were living in Hartford at the time. So it made sense to, you know, live and to work in the same location. But yeah, it never crossed our minds to leave the area. We love this neighborhood, love the people here. It's such a diverse eclectic range of people. And as a matter of fact, we're opening up a second restaurant right next door to here. So we love Frog Hollow. We love this neighborhood. We’re gonna be here forever.

June’s Hustle Hour, hosted at Red Rock Tavern

Since the Chamber is celebrating its own anniversary, I was curious if you had anything to share about how Red Rock and the Chamber have intersected or worked together over the years.

While we had strong connections with the city, I was really grateful to connect with the Chamber and the folks within the Chamber on a greater level. And since for the last, you know, four or five years I would say that has really cemented and helped us grow and sustain what we're doing, especially during the pandemic.

It's just been a great resource through connections with other small business owners, city officials, state officials, various programs that are supporting small businesses, you know, all the way down to small events like Hustle Hours and events like that. But I would say the Chamber's usually been my go-to source. If I have a question, a need, curiosity, looking to form a relationship, it's usually through the Chamber.

As a last question, I wanted to know if you had a message that you'd like to share with the community and fellow members.

Yeah. I’d want to talk about how important community is, being around as long as we have, I think a big reason why we’re still here and the number one reason we’ve been able to weather different storms is being engaged with our community. And that extends to not just our patrons, that extends to, you know, our neighbors, our fellow small businesses near and far in the city, that extends to the Chamber and schools and public resources, and non-profit organizations. So, I would say as a message what I love about Hartford is the community is so tight knit, so I just would keep preaching that, you know? Community, community, community.