Today we’d like to introduce you to The Le Vacher Family.
Hi The Le Vacher Family, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
The main thing to know about Le Vacher and its story, is that we are a family-owned and operated restaurant. To help you understand how we are related- here is the breakdown of our backgrounds! Jacob Euler (my brother)- Executive Chef/Owner: As a chef his training began at L’Academie de Cuisine in Maryland. Jacob has spent his time since then training in kitchens throughout the United States with top-tier chefs. He was on the opening team of Bardot Brasserie in the Aria Casino in Las Vegas, then become the Executive Pastry Sous Chef at Joel Robuchon and L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon. Following his stint in Las Vegas, he returned to Washington, D.C. where he worked with top French and Basque restaurants. Jacob moved to Dripping Springs in 2019 to be closer to family and with the dream of opening a restaurant.
Eric Weeks (my husband)- General Manager/Owner: Eric has worked for many years in Food Service Management in everything from restaurants, healthcare, higher education, and sales. He has had the honor of learning from so many in the business about customers service and how to build those strong connections with our community. He provides expertise on training our front of house staff and ensuring that our guests have everything they need to have a wonderful experience.
Lauren Weeks (me)- Events and Marketing Manager: Outside of my role in Le Vacher, I am a Registered and Licensed Dietitian. I have worked in hospitals at the clinical and Management level. This experience provided me with great insight into Food Service operations and providing an alternative perspective on food including accommodation of allergies, and special diet restrictions. My passions have driven me into the events and marketing world. I absolutely love finding a way to celebrate the people in our community and keep them informed on what Le Vacher has to offer our community.
Bill Euler (my father)- Operations Manager/Owner: Bill initially started as a CPA for which he became the partner of a local firm in Washington, DC. He then spent 25 years building two technology companies that specialize in global accounting for the hospitality industry, and has been fortunate to work with the leading hoteliers around the world. He leverages this knowledge and experience of business and provides guidance to ensure our financial success.
Leanne Euler (my mother) – HR Manager/Owner: Leanne is a retired teacher who grew up in a family of teachers and farmers, and is the foundation for our focus on community. When someone talks about farm to table, Leanne has actually been on both sides of the fence. Her people first approach helps support the human resources aspect of the restaurant and ensures our staff are well prepared and taken care of.
The start of this story is with my brother, Jacob. In 2019, Jacob made the move to Texas to be closer to family and with a dream of opening a restaurant. Jacob brings a passion for French culinary technique and history that is typically seen only in high end fine dining restaurants. Upon arrival, Jacob immediately recognized the opportunity to leverage that passion in a setting that exemplifies the Hill Country.
One thing to note is that our family has always been close and supportive of each other’s dreams. As Jacob’s ideas developed, each person began adding their skill sets and insights, which resulted in this family-owned restaurant. During open hours at the restaurant, you are sure to see many of us there, cooking, serving, bartending, laughing, and building connections with our community. We are thankful every day that we were able to make this opportunity come to fruition and provide an experience in our community that makes people feel celebrated.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Le Vacher opened in August of 2020, right in the middle of the COVID19 pandemic. Of course that presented many challenges to the restaurant including social distancing requirements, masking, sanitization procedures, greatly reduced customers, etc… It’s important to note that when making the decision to open or not, we were also witnessing the impact the pandemic had on our community with closing businesses, limited social outlets, and limited employment… The easy and cost effective thing would have been to delay opening, however, as a family owned business in a community, we decided that the best thing to do was open.
So far the ride has been both crazy and fun, but not easy. People are starting to venture out again, but getting adequate food supplies has been, and still remains, difficult. No one likes when you say that we are out of the filet mignon, but they also don’t understand that we are ordering from our suppliers who simply cannot deliver. Additionally, we have found very limited availability of experienced restaurant staff, which has added a great deal of unexpected training and oversight. Now that we are over the initial hill, we are very happy for the experienced staff that we did find, and extremely proud of the local high school students who have trained and worked so hard to provide the level of service expected at an upscale restaurant.
We’ve been impressed with Le Vacher, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
“Nestled in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, Le Vacher (meaning “The Herdsman”) celebrates the unifying power of food — breaking bread, forging connection, and creating memories. “This phrase is on our website and to me tells so much about who we are. Le Vacher is a French-inspired restaurant. Although Jacob’s training is in French cuisine, he does not let the traditional restrict him from creating a beautiful and delicious plate. He uses the methods from many styles of cuisine, inspiration from the food we ate growing up, and Texas Cuisine to guide his menu offerings.
We specialize in preparing/using high quality food and spirits in an upscale but more casual atmosphere to allow our community to celebrate all the things in life. Come eat artfully prepared food and craft cocktails with your friends and family and leave feeling celebrated, whether there was a reason to celebrate or not.
At only 11 months old, we were nominated as Top 3 for 8 Food and Drink categories in the Best of Dripping Springs Awards run by Dripping Springs News. (We have been made aware that we won the Best of Dripping Springs 2021 for Best Steak, Best Seafood, and Best Waitperson but this won’t be announced until July 30th). This makes us PROUD!
We love seeing our name recommended on social media for the place for people to celebrate their anniversary, birthday, date night, family visiting in town, wedding, etc. We work to make our customers time an experience– not just a meal.
What we want people to know about us is that we are not perfect. We are a family with a variety of skills and ideas. We do our best to offer all the best things, and we may fall short on the occasion, but we work tirelessly to improve daily. We are so rewarded when we see familiar faces and returning customers in the restaurant.
We currently offer the following service hours:
Dinner Thursday-Saturday 5pm-10pm
Brunch Saturday-Sunday 9:30am-2:30pm
Happy Hour Thursday and Friday 3pm-6pm
We are hoping to grow our service hours in due time!
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
My father once attended a seminar about risk. The seminar was taught by an astronaut from NASA that had been on repeated shuttle missions and space walks. During the seminar, the astronaut stated that he was the most risk adverse person that ever existed. When questioned how this could be, he simply stated that there was not a scenario that he had not considered and had a well thought out plan to rectify. We truly considered all the scenarios: Opening a restaurant when most people are staying home, leaving stable corporate jobs to push through a dream, hiring high school students with no experience as upscale servers. But we had a well thought out plan. As a family and a business, we take the time to organize, plan, evaluate, re-evaluate, know everyone’s role, accommodate and adjust to what is needed, in an effort to ensure both successful delivery to our customers and personal fulfillment.
We may not be out of the woods yet, and we strive to improve every day, but we have made some great new friends along the way, and are so proud of our staff and pleased with what we have been able to accomplish to date.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@levachertx.com
- Website: www.levachertx.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/levachertx
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/levachertx
Image Credits
Sign- Knoxy Knox Wine Bottle- Julia Keim Interior no people- Julia Keim Photo of the 5 of us- Kendall Dean Photography
