Aubri Lane’s focuses on serving the best for its customers

Published 10:37 am Tuesday, June 28, 2022

When Aubri Lane’s first opened its doors, the restaurant was located in downtown Milledgeville, where it spent the first 10 years of operation. 

By 2018, owner Jason Medders decided to close the original location and reopen the restaurant at The Club at Lake Sinclair. The reason behind the move to the club came from his friendship with Ted and Joni Smith, and he now works with them as partners, with Aubri Lane’s serving The Club at Lake Sinclair members and the Milledgeville community as a whole. 

Born and raised in Milledgeville, Medders spent a few years working in the restaurant and hotel industry in Atlanta. Medders bounced around as a chef in the kitchen and in management before landing with the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company for several years. That time with the Ritz-Carlton is where he said he “fined tuned” his restaurant service skills. Before owning and operating Aubri Lane’s, Medders owned three Quiznos sub’s locations.

After moving back to Milledgeville in 2007, Medders thought about getting back into the full-service restaurant business. He talked it over with his wife and decided that he wanted to open a restaurant, thus Aubri Lane’s was born. Medders named the restaurant after his daughter, Aubri, and his son, Lane, and he takes a lot of pride in having a menu with a little bit of everything on it. 

Customers will find steaks, seafood, chicken, burgers, soups and salads. Among the more popular menu items is the Hot Damn Shrimp, which is six jumbo Gulf shrimp deep fried and tossed in sauce, and the white chocolate bread pudding with bananas foster sauce. 

Aubri Lane’s does have plenty of specials throughout the week and in Medders mind, they have managed to find a core menu that customers can enjoy. Having that menu in place also allows them to do a little experimenting and get creative with the specials. The menu at Aubri Lane’s is usually seasonal, changing about four times a year. 

The COVID-19 pandemic presented Aubri Lane’s with challenges, but they weathered the storm. They have now been reopened for in-person dining for about a year, but Medders explained that members of the Milledgeville community applauded them for how they handled work during the pandemic. Not only did they offer online ordering and curbside pickup, but they also worked with The Club at Lake Sinclair to feed nurses at local hospitals and fire departments, free of charge during the time of COVID-19. 

“I guess it would’ve been easier just to close, but we wanted to do everything we could to help people in the community and our customers and our families,” Medders said. “I think we did a good job of it.” 

Presently, the biggest hurdle for Aubri Lane’s has been the shortage of staff, which has led to adjustments. The shortage, Medders explained, has made it a constant struggle to juggle the needs of guests, and ensure that there is enough staff. 

“You do all you can do; it’s just a handful right now,” he remarked.

Medders said staffing often makes consistency harder to maintain, however, he said he’s thankful for the staff that he has and how hard they work. 

“When you own a restaurant, you’re there more than you are at home. I love my family, of course, but when you’re at work you have your work family and you’re with these folks six to seven days a week, all night,” he said. “That’s important, and without having the staff we have right now, they’re one of the most important parts of this whole thing, the ones we have right now. They work tremendous hours because we’re so low staffed here and there. Everybody is just really sacrificing a lot, and it’s not that I enjoy the sacrifice, I just enjoy people that give us their all, day-in and day-out to help satisfy our guests, our customers.”

The owner of Aubri Lane’s strives even on the hardest days to succeed, which makes Medders and his staff dig in and keep going when things get tough. 

“We don’t want to fail our customers.”