The Path to Serenity

One word comes to mind after sipping tea, crunching into a chicken salad and topping it off with a scrumptious scone: serenity. This is what Karin Glass named her restaurant, a home full of history located in Zionsville, Indiana. Her business proved to be successful for 15 years, providing her customers an exciting array of tea, food, and events like murder mysteries. To her, Serenity represents optimism and encourages healthy lifestyles. Dinner Divine, on the other hand, is her catering business she also started 15 years ago. Even before the pandemic, Glass was delivering scratch-made frozen meals, and when Covid-19 struck, the demand for her family recipe-based dishes increased while her restaurant stood still.

A Shoots-and-Ladders Game

When COVID-19 forced shutdowns, Serenity and Dinner Divine fell victim. Due to the small size of the tea house on the bricks of Main Street in Zionsville, Karin Glass was unable to take appropriate social distance measures in her tea room, resulting in its closure. Dinner Divine took a step back as well, scaling down to its origin of delivery only. Despite these changes, Glass explained because of her catering experience, she did not encounter much struggle during the peak of the pandemic. She became accustomed to last-minute changes. Flexibility in the spring of 2021 led her to a creative partnership with the Golf Club of Indiana, located in Whitestown, to begin offering her pop-up events and meals as part of their Cardinal Room and golf course options. With a new staff and location for her food, tea and events, Glass began to spread her resources more widely and spend more time cooking.

With Serenity settling at the golf club, Glass had to find a way for Dinner Divine’s farm fresh meals to spread its wings. Instead of sticking to Zionsville, she continued to create partnerships through Central Indiana. Increasing her business allowed an expansion of services such as weddings, mystery dinners, and other events. The Cardinal Room at the Golf Club of Indiana, Homestead at The Sixpence, even customers’ houses exemplify the range of spots for tea-sipping and sandwich-eating.

Reflection and Response

Prior to the pandemic, Glass took pleasure in the unique antiques she used in Serenity. The detailed teacups, furniture, and heartwarming feel of home ranked as favorites among her customers. Unfortunately, struggles of the historic home where Serenity was located included parking, street closures, and finding enough helping hands for the crowds, creating many concerns, expenses and problems not easily solved. Once the pandemic altered her business, though, she treated the uncertainty as a positive. 

“You have to deal with the cards you’re dealt,” Karin says. By combining the management of time, sanitization, vendors and new locations, Karin Glass has gained a bigger staff and customer base, something not many restaurants have been able to do during the last 15 months.

At first, some customers found the change of the murder mysteries’ location a bit difficult to adjust. However, Glass saw this as an opportunity. She created a mystery out of the location by mystifying the event from start to finish. Now, a week before her murder mysteries, she texts her guests the site of the event, giving them something unique and fun to look forward to.

Since the reopening of the state in April, she is doing big parties, something she could not do at her smaller Zionsville location. She believes it has been a blessing in disguise. She has hosted events in Wellington, Carmel, Whitestown, and more. Looking to the future, she will host events like the Dungeness Crab and Steak Fest, making drinks at the Hotel Tango, yoga with bunnies, and her famous Twilight Tea at the Homestead. With the expansions of Serenity and Dinner Divine, Karin has enjoyed hearing people laugh with their family and friends again. She is able to use her creativity and connections to bring guests, staff, and herself the comfort and happiness that people lacked for so long.

• To find out more about Karin Glass and her businesses, visit her website Occasions Divine. Details on catering, lunches, private events, and contacts are provided.