Escapism Encouraged at Lost + Found Tiki Bar

After about a month of soft opening, the new tiki bar in downtown Wilmington, Lost + Found, is now officially open for business. Owners Abby and Jon Beland took over the vacancy left behind by Dram & Draught this summer and quickly set out to transform the space.

“The bones of the space were kind of here,” Abby Beland said. “We lucked out when we took over Dram & Draught for the wood elements, but then added in bamboo, accents behind the shelving, greenery and new lighting.”

The space is also decked out with several one-of-a-kind artifacts from the couple’s travels and Abby Beland’s family’s personal collection.

“My dad worked for the State Department, so a lot of the treasures are actually what my parents collected while we traveled the world while I was growing up,” she said.

While Abby Beland’s upbringing was global – mostly Asia, the Pacific Islands and Africa – Jon Beland grew up in a small town between Philadelphia and the Jersey Shore. He then moved to New York City and eventually LA to pursue acting and – “as one does” – started bartending to make ends meet.

“I always wanted to be an actor, so bartending was just a necessity that I ended up getting really good at,” Jon Beland said. “But I really did enjoy the creative element of bartending. I always liked the mixology portion and coming up with drinks.”

His creative leaning brought him to the field of production design and fabrication, working to build out and install concepts into physical environments in Hollywood.

Abby Beland is a hospitality producer, running her own company, Table Set Go, that provides culinary vision and support for events. She quickly found that her extensive travel background and familiarity with a variety of cultures and cuisines gave her an edge in her field.

“I grew up traveling the world with my parents and everywhere you go there’s a new culture for you to learn about and there’s different foods to try,” she said. “I never thought of that as unique or outlandish. I just absorbed as much as I could.”

The couple met and started dating in 2021.

“Before meeting Jon, I had said I will never date an actor or a bartender,” Abby Beland said.

She shares that on one of their first few dates, he asked what her go-to drink was and started making her a whiskey sour.

“I was like, ‘You’re weirdly good at that.’ He told me that before he was in production, he was acting and bartending. I was like, ‘Oh no, what have I done?’ And now we’re married. With a bar.”

After the couple got married, they decided to move closer to family. Jon Beland’s sister and nephew were already living in Wilmington, and the couple moved here in March of 2025.

“I decided I was going to leave my job and realized that what I did didn’t really exist here,” he said. “So we were going to have to start something new. One night, randomly, Abby and I were like, ‘Let’s go get tiki’ and had heard of Sorrow Drowner, but it wasn’t open.”

Sorrow Drowner, the now-closed tiki bar on 10th Street, was, unbeknownst to the Belands, in the process of closing up shop at the time. The couple began to wonder if there was an opportunity they could fill.

“We were very interested in tiki,” Jon Beland said. “It comes out of Hollywood, and there’s a large culture around it there. And then when we would travel, we would always make it a sort of mission to find the best tiki bar wherever we were.”

The first tiki bar opened in Hollywood in 1933 and eventually became a nationwide trend. In many ways, tiki cocktails were the first iteration of what we think of as craft cocktails today. The Belands are both quick to mention that there’s a difference between a beach bar and tiki bar.

“Tiki is not really a beach bar necessarily,” Jon Beland said. “It does have tropical elements obviously and there’s the same kind of escapism you expect from a beach bar, but tiki is elevated.”

The Belands pitched the concept of Lost + Found at a One Million Cups meeting in early November of last year. Not only did they get feedback that the concept would work, but fellow local business owners rallied around them to offer support and insights.

“The community has just been so open,” Abby Beland said. “I think if we were to do this in New York or LA, it would be a knife fight to the death because everyone thinks it’s competitive. Here, they’ve just been so open.”

The menu is a balance of traditional tiki cocktails – think Mai Tais, Jungle Birds and Painkillers – and the couple’s unique spin.

“What I wanted to do going into creating this menu is pick cocktails that were well known, but I also wanted to create a variety of taste profiles,” Jon Beland said.

While tiki is often affiliated with rum drinks, Lost + Found will also serve a variety of cocktails including tequila, vodka and whiskey-based drinks, as well as wine and beer. Accompanying the spirits will be fresh-squeezed juices and house-made syrups. There are also zero-proof options available.

As for standout menu items, Abby Beland mentioned the Green Eyed Siren as her favorite. Named after their cat Penelope’s green eyes, the Green Eyed Siren contains Japanese whiskey, melon liqueur, green tea pandan, lime, coconut mix and cinnamon.

“Jon started calling it my drink because it has Japanese and Filipino flavors,” Abby Beland said. “So that’s automatically my favorite drink.”

Jon Beland is less committal in claiming his favorite menu item, mentioning that there are different drinks for different moods. Standouts to him include the Ancient Mariner (two rum blend, allspice dram, grapefruit, lime); the Three Dots and a Dash (two rum blend, allspice dram, falernum, liqueur, orange, honey ginger, lime); and the One Bad Banana Jama (two rum blend, banana, falernum, lime, maps cinnamon syrup).

“That one is like a smoothie for pirates,” he said.

As for future projects, Abby Beland mentions that the upstairs area will eventually be a private-event space called The Crow’s Nest. In the meantime, the couple is excited to welcome guests into their little slice of escapism.

“What I love most about bar scenes is obviously an awesomely crafted, balanced drink,” Jon Beland said. “But with tiki you also get the escapism in the environment. It transports you. We want you to feel like you’re stepping into a different time here and leaving the rest of it all behind.”

Lost + Found Tiki Bar is now open at 109 Market St. Learn more at lostandfoundtiki.com.