Hunters & Gatherers: A DeLand Name That Remembers

According to Hunters & Gatherers’ account of the property, Bellini’s occupied the corner from 1978 to 2021. It later became the final home of Hunter’s Restaurant, whose family history in DeLand reached back to 1949. Hunter’s closed in 2022.

Those names belong to different businesses, but the address connects them. That is how the history of a downtown often works. Buildings outlast individual enterprises, and people remember the rooms through what happened in them.

For someone with a long relationship to a town, a street corner can contain several eras at once. The current sign is visible. Earlier names remain available in memory. A person can explain where something is by telling you what used to be there.

That layered knowledge is part of belonging to a place. It makes an address more than a coordinate. The building becomes attached to people’s lives.

Hunters & Gatherers began with that depth already around it. Recognizing the history gives the new restaurant a thoughtful relationship to its surroundings.

The restaurant explicitly describes its name as an homage to the Hunter family. I appreciate the generosity of that decision.

Opening a business requires an owner to establish an identity. Choosing a name that acknowledges someone else places the new undertaking within a larger local story. It says the previous contribution is worth carrying.

That does not require the new restaurant to repeat every feature of the old one. The tribute can live alongside new ideas. In fact, that is what makes the gesture interesting: remembrance becomes part of a business still making its own decisions.

A community benefits from those connections. Change becomes easier to understand when people can see what has been recognized along the way. The past stays in conversation with the present.

Here, every mention of the new name keeps a small piece of that earlier story within reach.

The second half of the name points toward what people will do next. A remembered family name joins an invitation to gather. The past gives the place depth; the people arriving give it a continuing life.

That is a pleasing balance for a downtown restaurant. It can honor an earlier era while making room for occasions that belong entirely to the people having them now.

The connection to the BakeChop family of businesses adds another DeLand thread. Taylor Bass’s homecoming story began with a decision to build in the town that shaped her. Hunters & Gatherers carries that local investment into an address with memories of its own.

I find that convergence worth noticing. Different chapters of DeLand’s food life meet in one place. The new restaurant becomes both a participant in the present and a keeper of a name from the past.

That is a substantial role for a business to take on, and a beautiful one when it is done with affection.

History survives in archives and photographs. It also survives through ordinary acts of recognition: telling someone the earlier name of a building, remembering a family, choosing to preserve a connection when something changes.

Hunters & Gatherers makes one of those acts visible. The name gives people a reason to ask where it came from. The answer brings the Hunter family back into the conversation.

That is why I want this place understood beyond its restaurant category. The business has chosen a relationship with DeLand’s memory, and its own future will become part of that same local story.

The door opens onto a new chapter. The name makes sure someone is remembered as people walk in.