Set within Bud’s Preserve on Walmart’s new Home Office campus in Bentonville, Arkansas, Onyx at The Preserve is open to the wider community and connected directly to the surrounding Greenway and trail system. People can arrive on foot, by bike or by car, and the venue invites them to stay for much more than a coffee stop.
The concept comes from the team behind Onyx Coffee Lab, but it stretches the familiar Onyx experience into something much broader. Coffee remains central, while food, cocktails, wine, design and full-service hospitality shape the rest of the day. Onyx describes The Preserve as its newest expression: a gathering place designed to move from morning coffee and breakfast into lunch, dinner, drinks and events.
That wider ambition also shaped the building itself. Onyx owner Jon Allen developed the concept with architect Marlon Blackwell around a space that would feel connected to the landscape, restrained in form but still warm and tactile. Stainless steel sits against white oak, earthy plaster and limestone-rich surfaces, while indirect lighting changes the atmosphere as the day progresses.
Running through all of this is the bar. For Behind Bars, it became one of our largest and most bespoke projects to date. Rather than adapting one of our existing systems to the space, the bar was developed around The Preserve itself: its architecture, the changing food and drinks program, the movement of guests and staff, and the operational demands of a venue that works very differently from morning to evening.
The result is an extensive custom stainless-steel environment organized around three connected working areas: the Coffee Island, the Cocktail/Kitchen Line and the Back Line. Each has a distinct role, but together they read as one continuous piece of architecture.
The Preserve moves through a lot in a day.
Someone might arrive from the trail for coffee in the morning, stay for lunch, meet over drinks later on or sit down for dinner in the evening. The food program expands the café experience into ingredient-led dining influenced by Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavors, while cocktails and wine become a larger part of the offer as the day progresses.
The bar needed to accommodate all of this without reading as a collection of separate stations.
Rather than one single station, the bar is organized around three connected working environments: the Coffee Island, the Cocktail/Kitchen Line and the Back Line. Each has a distinct role, but together they form one continuous system.
The scale is substantial, but very little of it feels off-the-shelf. Curved steel, long continuous surfaces and details developed specifically for the project carry the same language across coffee, cocktails, food service and the supporting operations behind them.
From the guest side, the result feels relatively calm. Behind it sits a much denser operation.
Coffee, cocktails, pour-over, food service, wine, refrigeration, storage, guest seating, pickup and clearing each have their own requirements. Much of the design work came down to making those different functions coexist without losing the clarity of the room.
The Cocktail/Kitchen Line is a good example. Bespoke cocktail workstations are built directly into the continuous stainless-steel run, alongside pour-over coffee and the areas supporting food service and guest seating. A flexible well can hold ingredients on ice during one service, wine bottles during another, or close flush when it is not needed.
There is no hard visual break between coffee, cocktails and the restaurant operation. The bar simply moves with the program.
The Coffee Island is where the collaboration with Modbar becomes most visible.
Coffee remains central to the Onyx experience, but here it sits within a much broader hospitality program. That made it important for the coffee setup to feel integrated into the architecture, rather than operate as a separate visual world within the room.
Modbar’s undercounter format gave us more freedom to develop the island around the space and around the way Onyx works. The espresso taps and steam wands remain visible, while much of the equipment sits below the surface.
That openness changes the relationship at the counter. The coffee is still present, but the machine is no longer the dominant object between barista and guest.
For Behind Bars, the task was to develop that setup within a completely bespoke island and connect it to the wider bar language. The Coffee Island was not developed from one of our standard systems. Its proportions, geometry and details were shaped specifically for The Preserve and for the operation around it.
The Modbar integration became one part of that larger custom environment, allowing coffee to sit naturally alongside the rest of the project without losing its own identity.
From there, the bar continues into cocktails, pour-over, food service and guest seating, all within the same stainless-steel language. Different programs happen across the space, but they remain visually connected.
For a venue that changes so much over the course of a day, that continuity was essential.
A visual read of Onyx at The Preserve, moving between plans, renders, details and the finished bar.
The material character of the room changes as much as the hospitality program does.
During the day, light brings out the texture in the plaster and limestone-rich surfaces. Later, the space becomes warmer and more intimate. The food and drinks program follows a similar rhythm, moving from coffee and breakfast towards dining, cocktails and wine.
The stainless steel remains a constant through those shifts.
Its precision sits in contrast with the warmer materials around it, while the rounded edges and continuous surfaces connect it back to the architecture. It has a strong presence without needing to dominate the room.
More importantly, the same physical bar continues to support very different moments of service.
Different sections become more or less active. Wells change use. Coffee remains part of the operation while cocktails, wine and food take on a greater role. Guests arrive differently, stay for different lengths of time and interact with the bar in different ways.
That adaptability is really what sits behind the scale of the project.
There are plenty of individual details worth looking at, from the Modbar integration and Paloma stations to the changing wells and cyclist pickup window. But The Preserve makes the most sense when those elements are seen together.
Onyx created a venue where coffee sits within a much wider hospitality experience. Our role was to build the working environment around it, connecting the different parts of the day through one coherent bar system.
The result has a significant physical presence in the room, but its real value is in how much it allows the space, and the people working within it, to do.
Onyx at The Preserve 1101 Excellence Dr Bentonville, AR 72712 Onyx Bar design + fabrication Behind Bars behindbars.net Integrated coffee system Modbar modbar.com
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Take me there
Onyx at The Preserve brings coffee, food, cocktails and full-service hospitality together under one roof. Behind it sits one of our largest custom bar projects to date, where Behind Bars, Onyx and Modbar came together to shape a system designed to support the space from morning through evening.
Alexandre Ruas was back behind the bar at Torto’s anniversary, so we took the opportunity to make him talk about it. There was some rust, an old favorite in Bjørn’s Margarita, and a few thoughts on how bartending has changed in the 11 years since his last proper shift.