The serial founder is testing out a curious concept. Is it a pop-up, a festival, or a foodie club? And is this small town ready for it?

BY CHRISTINE LAGORIO-CHAFKIN @LAGORIO

“I don’t think an Ancient Roman restaurant would do well in Bentonville,” said Phil Libin, the serial founder who relocated to Arkansas from San Francisco nearly five years ago. Libin was telling me this because he’d recently encountered a “reasonably popular” YouTuber who did a series covering what gladiators feasted on in Ancient Rome. “But I could sell tickets for it for one night. That would kill.”

This was last October, and I was walking with Libin down the middle of a residential street that lacked sidewalks, toward a meal that wasn’t at a restaurant, yet cost $350 per person and would be cooked by a chef who had flown in from Washington, D.C. Sure, there is certain amount of wealth in Bentonville—it’s the home of the Waltons and the company town of Walmart—but the main industries in this region of northwest Arkansas are soybean and corn production.

“We have the chefs. We have the venues,” Libin said. But he’s not interested in getting into the restaurant business. “I’d like to create a thing that’s an entirely new career path.” This was the moment it clicked for me, Libin’s vision for his three-year-old company, Bentoville, which is his first foray outside of building and funding tech startups. It’s a concept that Libin calls Food Concerts, which involves flying in big-name chefs to prepare and host a few evenings of dinners in mid-sized cities—places that might be great to........

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