Trisha Yearwood was not a fan of the idea of the Friends in Low Places Bar and Honky Tonk, at least when her husband, Garth Brooks, first approached her with the idea. The Grand Ole Opry member admits she had to be persuaded when Brooks first broached the idea with her, but once she was in, she was all in.

“My first response when Garth suggested this idea was no. I’ve not dreamed of owning a bar,” Yearwood tells Eater Nashville. “But you go downtown, you see all these bars by all these country artists, and I can’t imagine there not being something that represents Garth Brooks in this town.”

For Yearwood, having a bar centered around her husband’s legendary career had to also involve her own recipes.

“You can’t have a Garth Brooks bar and not have Trisha food in it,” Yearwood maintains.

Once Yearwood and Brooks committed to Friends in Low Places in Nashville, they were all in. The couple hand-picked which of Yearwood’s many recipes to feature on the menu, including Mama’s Meatloaf, Trisha’s Veggie Burger, Caramel-Bottom Apple Pie and more, choosing recipes that guests would enjoy, while also feeling like they had a home-cooked meal.

“It’s about making simple food that’s good, and keeping that quality high,” Yearwood says. “We’re not going to make it complicated. And that’s been the premise of my whole thing with food: I’m a home cook — I’m not a chef.”

Yearwood and Brooks not only picked which menu items to serve — also taste-testing themselves —  but were also very hands-on in every aspect, including the design and decor.

“We decided if we were going to do it, we weren’t going to just license our names,” Yearwood shares. “We were going to really be in it.”

It’s a sentiment Yearwood had from the beginning, which she explained ahead of the official grand opening of Friends in Low Places in March.

“I’ve just always been not a person who puts my name on something,” Yearwood told Everything Nash at the time. “In the music industry, your name is on it, whether you take responsibility for it or not. My dad taught me that. He was a banker, and he was like, ‘Look, you gotta take responsibility for everything in your life.’ So from choosing songs, to hiring and firing my band members myself, all of the things in my life, I’ve always taken that responsibility.”