First Watch opens 12th central Ohio eatery

LEWIS CENTER, Ohio (WCMH) -- Egg-cellent news: First Watch has launched its 12th central Ohio location, touting the brand's refreshed design and layout.

The brunch and lunch chain's new restaurant at 6547 Artesian Run in Lewis Center is now welcoming guests after opening in July. The 4,600-square-foot location is the brand's first new Central Ohio eatery since opening a Sawmill location along Dublin Center Drive in late 2022.

Lewis Center's new location sports the brand's most recent aesthetic, with seating for more than 160 guests and an indoor-outdoor bar connected to a recessed patio. The eatery has brought in around 30 new employees.

The Dublin Center Drive restaurant was one of the chain's first to feature the new design. That location also includes a dedicated to-go room and cookline, and the brand's first merchandise area with cookbooks, artisan toast, seasonings and t-shirts for sale.

First Watch first expanded in central Ohio in 1997 with a location in Dublin at 6788 Perimeter Loop Road, which remains open today. A restaurant in Worthington followed, also still open. Since then, the Florida-based chain has ballooned to around 530 locations across 29 states, including more than 50 eateries that opened just last year.

The brand is one of several that has decided to pop up in Lewis Center, along with a combo craft brewery and coffee shop that opened in May. The shop is home to a range of brews, a cocktail menu created in collaboration with Watershed Distillery, freshly roasted coffee from One Line Coffee and pastries from Der Dutchman.

A national cookie chain that unveils a lineup of new flavors every week and boasts an award-winning chocolate chip cookie has opened in Lewis Center earlier this simmer. The shop marks the brand’s first Ohio location and is joining dozens of storefronts nationwide, including in Nevada, Texas, Indiana, Florida, New Jersey and more.

A shop boasted as the state’s “biggest coffeehouse,” home to beans sourced from Yemen and a brew recipe dating back 500 years, opened in Lewis Center in March. The new location opened marks the brand’s second central Ohio shop after the first opened last year in Hilliard at 3221 Hilliard Rome Road.

A butcher shop home to an extensive collection of wine and beef produced from the owner’s personal ranch is now open in Lewis Center. Named Prime + Vine, the shop specializes in American Wagyu beef farmed from owner Jeff Gaylor’s cattle ranch in Knox County.