On Monday, KWTV News 9 highlighted a local Veteran-Owned business to share their story and their mission to help their community.
Owner of The Crimson Melt in Moore, Ashontay Owens is a United States Air Force Veteran. Owens served as a firefighter in the Air Force for 20 years and retired as a fire chief in 2021.
Owens has been deployed six times and been deployed eight times, but each location has something similar in a location you don’t often think about, the kitchen.
Owens started The Crimson Melt, a gourmet grilled cheese restaurant almost two years ago, all because of bread, butter, and cheese became his comfort meal since he said that’s something that was always in the fridge at all firehouses.
“It’s been a joy trying to find what my real passion was, and that was really pouring into others, serving, and cooking. I like to eat, I’m a fat kid at heart, so I figured why not tell the firefighting story of how we break bread around the shift dinner table and share that with our customers,” Owens said.
The Crimson Melt is a first-responder themed restaurant, driven by a mission to recognize and support our nation’s Veterans.
“So the Crimson Melt idea is: come dine in a firehouse, whatever happened out there, leave it out there, if you had a bad day it’s okay we are brothers and sisters in here, we’ll take care of you, we’ll feed you, we’ll do everything we need to,” Owens said.
Owens tells me shift dinner is something that’s symbolic within all firehouses. Coming together at the table to break bread, decompress, and enjoy each other’s company. He said he wanted to bring that unity and solidarity to everybody’s table.
“I wanted to do something for two reasons, one: I wanted to tell the Air Force Firefighting story, I wanted to tell the DOD Firefighting story, and let everybody understand and know the differences and hey the Department of Defense also has firefighters, but it’s also two-fold here,” Owens said. “The other part of that is that I wanted to really shine a light on mental health. And as you know, firefighters, cops, medics we all respond to emergency scenes and sometimes those scenes don’t work out in our favor, and a lot of the times it can be very, very traumatic and that trauma will stick with you for a little while, especially after you experience things for a while.”
One of the first things you see when you walk into The Crimson Melt is the Wall of Heroes. That wall is covered in first-responder patches where they have come in to eat, share their stories, and hang their patch on the wall.
“I really, really have an innate passion to want to save life and to pour into others and to give to others and to make sure others can come home safe, not just firefighters but everybody around us, because it is hard when you are dealing with some of these calls,” Owens said.
Owens also founded the Folds to the Flame foundation, a mission fueled by honor and county focused on first-responder suicide awareness, prevention, and postvention.
Along with grilled cheeses, The Crimson Melt also serves luxury milkshakes.
The Crimson Melt will mark its second-year anniversary this June.