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A corporate executive is sent to a small town to re-brand a restaurant as part of a strategic acquisition, but the iconic diner happens to be in her home town where she hasn't been in years and the owner is her high school sweetheart.
—Happy_Evil_Dude
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Mina has everything going for her -- a boyfriend who has meticulously planned out their lives and a great job with International Corporate Brands. But her world is turned upside down when work sends her to her hometown in Tennessee where she must convince an old, stubborn restaurant owner to sell his property. There is just one problem - the restaurant is now owned by her ex-boyfriend, Clay, who claims he will never sell. He resists her negotiations every step of the way, and all the while sparks fly.
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Mina Jones - her given name short for Wilhelmina - is an up and coming executive at Atlanta-based International Corporate Brands (ICB), which makes strategic acquisitions in the food and restaurant industry and rebrands those acquisitions under their corporate framework, including standardization in production and building upon economies of scale. Reed, her boyfriend, also works for the company, they working their way up the corporate ladder together. Mina gets a professional opportunity in leading her first ever corporate compliance for the relatively new acquisition of a six outlet regional chain that ICB wants to take national. The issue is solely the flagship restaurant which is not complying, the owner who cannot be reached. It isn't until she is given the job that she learns the restaurant in question is Hart's Diner in her hometown of Sycamore Springs, Tennessee, where she left fifteen years ago never to return, her life as "Willi Mae Jones" there which she has successfully put behind her. The diner was owned by the Hart family, her high school boyfriend, Clay Hart, the son of the original owner. Mina will eventually learn that the reason that ICB has not been able to contact Mr. Hart is because he passed away three months ago, Clay now operating the flagship restaurant. Mina is not looking forward to seeing Clay, their break-up not a happy one in her want for a sophisticated big city life against his joy about all that Sycamore Springs had to offer, that break-up despite being in love with each other. Clay ends up not being happy about the reason for Mina's return to Sycamore Springs, as he has built the diner around fresh, local ingredients - such as for Trout Tuesday, the trout which he catches himself fresh that day - rather than ICB's M.O. of using national suppliers of generally frozen and/or preservative filled foods. Despite the reason for Mina being in Sycamore Springs, there are still unresolved feelings between her and Clay. The question becomes if the two can reconcile their differences on both the professional and personal sides, especially as, on paper, Reed seems to fulfill more of what she wants on both sides of her life.
—Huggo
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Clay Hart happily runs the family restaurant in tiny Sycamore Springs, Tennessee, to full customer satisfaction, while being the local fire department. Then his high school girl friend WilhelMina Jones, who left for a career in Atlanta without taking the trouble to dump him, is sent there by Reed, her fiance and superior at ICB, the multinational which bought the Hart restaurant franchise from Clay's recently died father, to pull the place in line with soulless company policies, like industrial suppliers instead of fresh local produce. 'Willy' evolves from eager to leave to re-appreciating her native small town, and Clay convinces her that his chef Lucien's way is simply better for there, yet the dead by which his father left him the restaurant 'physically' won't stand up legally. Reed arrives, propose to Mina In vain, gets jealous and mean until Clay, feeling betrayed, decides to leave, but guilty Willie surprises both as well.
—KGF Vissers
