Finding Home Around the Table: Amy Kinsel on Building Community at Voodoo Brewing Co. Toledo

A neighborhood gathering place can become part of the rhythm of a community.

It is where friends meet after work, families celebrate birthdays, neighbors unexpectedly run into one another, and local organizations gather people around a cause. The food and drinks may bring people through the door, but the feeling they find once they arrive is often what brings them back.

That sense of belonging is exactly what Amy Kinsel, owner of Voodoo Brewing Co. Toledo, hopes to create.

In this episode of Women in the Driver Seat, host Mary Helen Darah sits down with Amy to talk about the unexpected journey that took her from pharmacy to hospitality, how years of military life prepared her for the uncertainty of business ownership, and why she believes a successful neighborhood business should become part of the community surrounding it.

For Amy, owning Voodoo Brewing is not simply about running a restaurant.

It is about creating the kind of place her own family looked for everywhere life took them.

Finding Community Wherever Home Happened to Be

Before becoming a business owner, Amy built her career in an entirely different field.

She earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree and became a pharmacist because she wanted to help people.

At the same time, her husband’s active duty military career meant their family rarely stayed in one place for very long.

They moved approximately every one to two years.

Each new assignment meant another community, another neighborhood, and another place to learn how to call home.

Yet Amy began noticing something familiar wherever they went.

Her family would eventually find a local place where they could relax, enjoy a meal, and simply feel welcome.

It might be different in every city, but the feeling was the same.

When her husband retired from the military and the family returned to the Toledo area, where Amy is originally from, they wanted to recreate that experience for other people.

“We wanted to recreate that same thing here within our community,” Amy explains.

Something comfortable.

Something casual.

Something that felt like it belonged to everyone.

From Pharmacy to Hospitality

On paper, pharmacy and hospitality may look like very different careers.

Amy sees a common thread.

She originally entered pharmacy because she enjoyed helping people. Hospitality allows her to do that in another way.

Instead of helping someone through a healthcare setting, she can help create a space where people relax, connect, and enjoy time together.

Taking the lead at Voodoo Brewing has still required a significant adjustment.

Amy describes the experience of ownership with three words: amazing, challenging, and a learning curve.

There are new decisions to make constantly.

There are questions without obvious answers.

There is no guarantee that each day will unfold according to plan.

Surprisingly, that uncertainty feels familiar.

Learning to Be Comfortable With the Unexpected

Years as a military spouse taught Amy something that has become incredibly useful in business.

Plans change.

Sometimes quickly.

Military families often have to adapt to new places, new routines, and new circumstances without much warning. Amy learned how to keep moving when the next step was not completely clear.

Business ownership has called on many of those same skills.

Amy has discovered that she enjoys challenges and is more comfortable with uncertainty than she may have realized before stepping into ownership.

“You’re constantly dealt with changes that you have to just roll with,” she says of military life.

Now she brings that same mindset into Voodoo Brewing.

There may always be another challenge around the corner, but Amy has learned that not knowing exactly what comes next does not have to prevent you from moving forward.

More Than Food and Drinks

Ask Amy what makes a great neighborhood gathering place and her answer has little to do with a menu.

It begins with how people feel.

A great gathering place should be welcoming, comfortable, and connected to its community.

It is somewhere the staff learns your name.

It is somewhere you might walk through the door and recognize a neighbor.

It is a place for birthdays, celebrations, conversations, fundraisers, and ordinary afternoons when someone simply wants somewhere comfortable to sit.

“It’s more than just good food and good drinks,” Amy says.

That distinction matters to her.

A restaurant can serve a meal.

A gathering place creates memories.

Amy wants Voodoo Brewing Co. Toledo to be somewhere people associate with both.

Becoming Part of Toledo’s Business Community

Returning to the Toledo area has also given Amy an opportunity to experience the local business community from a completely new perspective.

One of her favorite parts of ownership has been meeting other business owners.

Rather than experiencing competition everywhere she turns, Amy says she has found people who genuinely want other local businesses to succeed.

Those relationships have created opportunities for partnerships, events, fundraisers, and shared efforts to support the larger community.

The encouragement has also reinforced one of Amy’s biggest lessons from ownership.

You do not build something meaningful by yourself.

Community matters outside the walls of the business, and the people working beside you every day matter just as much inside them.

Building the Right Team

If Amy could go back and give herself one piece of advice at the beginning of this journey, it would be to remember the importance of the team around her.

She considers that one of the most valuable lessons she has learned.

A business may have an owner’s name attached to it, but the experience customers have is created by everyone who shows up each day.

Amy talks proudly about the team at Voodoo Brewing and the role they play in making guests feel welcome.

They prepare meals.

They greet customers.

They solve problems.

They create the atmosphere Amy envisioned when she thought about all those gathering places her family discovered while moving around the country.

Amy wants every dish to be served with the same care someone would give a family member.

That philosophy brings the story full circle.

Years ago, her family was searching for places where they could walk in as newcomers and quickly feel at home.

Today, Amy is leading a team responsible for creating that feeling for someone else.

Creating a Place Where People Belong

Amy Kinsel did not necessarily expect her professional journey to lead from pharmacy into hospitality.

But looking back, the pieces fit together.

Pharmacy taught her about helping people.

Military life taught her how to adapt.

Moving from community to community showed her the value of places where people feel welcomed.

And returning to Toledo gave her the opportunity to create one herself.

That is the larger vision behind Voodoo Brewing Co. Toledo.

A neighborhood gathering place is not defined only by what is served.

It is defined by the people who gather there.

It is a birthday party.

A fundraiser.

A familiar face across the room.

A conversation with someone you did not expect to see.

It is the comfort of knowing there is a place in your community where you can walk through the door and feel like you belong.

For Amy, that is what hospitality is really about.

👉 Watch now to hear Amy Kinsel share how military life, a career in pharmacy, and a love for welcoming neighborhood spaces led her to business ownership and a new chapter at Voodoo Brewing Co. Toledo.