Martha Hoover built the restaurant she believed should exist.

Before opening the first Cafe Patachou in 1989, Martha Hoover was a deputy prosecutor, not a restaurateur. She’d never cooked professionally, waited tables, or managed a restaurant, but she had one unwavering conviction: a restaurant could give people more than a meal. She understood that most of life is made up of ordinary moments, and believed those moments deserved extraordinary care.

At a time when much of the industry prioritized convenience, speed, and sameness, Martha saw value in sourcing from local producers, cooking from scratch, treating employees with respect, and creating a place people would make part of everyday life. 

Martha entered an industry she didn’t know and learned it without surrendering her judgment to the way things had always been done. She questioned practices others took for granted and held firm to her standards for food and hospitality. She did the work to make her independent restaurant succeed and proved that the kind of place she believed in could not only last, but thrive.

This human-centered approach has earned national recognition, including being named one of Food & Wine’s “19 Great Restaurants to Work For” and Restaurant Hospitality’s “Top 25 Coolest Multi-Concept Companies,” with leadership featured in Vogue and Eater for innovation in food, sustainability, and workplace culture.

Today, Won’t Stop Hospitality is expanding thoughtfully beyond its Indianapolis roots – scaling with intention while preserving the standards, culture, and sense of care that have defined Won’t Stop from the beginning.