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Welcome to Money talksIn this series, we interview people about their relationship with money, their relationships with each other, and how those relationships impact each other.
Cheryl Roorda, 51, and her husband, Zac Smith, 52, have two adult children. Cheryl and Zac worked in the independent music industry for decades before founding SQZBX Brewery and Pizza Shop Located in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The restaurant has been in business for nearly seven years.
The following conversation has been lightly condensed and edited.
Zach: We’ve been running SQZBX for about six and a half years, but we’ve been working on it for much longer than that.
Zach: At the time, we purchased a run-down building on Ouachita Avenue in Hot Springs that had been an old piano store, and the previous owner was retiring and no longer in the piano business.
Cheryl: It was filled with musical instruments and we were delighted because we were musicians at the time.
Zach: Cheryl played the accordion, and I played a tuba-like instrument called an E-flat spiral. We played a lot at a German restaurant. Our band was called The Itinerant Locals, and every summer we would pack the kids into the car and drive around the country to play wherever we could. We did special tours—we took Amtrak trains across the country for 45 days, toured the Ouachita River on a solar-powered boat, and joined a circus and traveled with them.
Our lifestyle is primarily about being around our kids, playing music in a way that pleases ourselves (and hopefully our audiences), and making a great, but not very well paid, living.
When we came to Hot Springs National Park, we could buy a house for $32,000. Even this building was just – what was that?
Zach: $65,000, on a main street in the heart of the city. The house was run-down, but the price was reasonable. With a terrible credit history and a fantasy business plan, we got a business loan. It was 2007.
We didn’t really have a perfect plan, but at some point, we realized there was no way to solve all of the needs of this building on our own. It needed a roof. It needed HVAC. It needed all-new plumbing. It needed all-new electrical. It needed all-new flooring.
In 2012, the FCC announced that it would open the Low Power FM LicenseThat’s when it dawned on me. For years I’d dreamed of opening a radio station in a community center. A station located in a place where people gathered and talked —
Cheryl: A place where they can eat.
Zach: Eating, chatting, listening to music, etc.
Therefore, we applied for the 2013 transfer window Low-key arta local nonprofit that we were actively involved in. We obtained the license and got the station on the air with sweat, cash, and a few credit cards—from that point on, we were able to show bankers around our completed, fully functional, beautiful radio station, walk them through other parts of the building that were still under construction, and describe the rest of our vision.
A brewery. A pizza place. Restored tin ceilings, wood floors and native Arkansas pine.
Then we can get a traditional SBA Business Loans We built the restaurant, which was a farce in itself. Of course, we ran out of money and had to take out a repair loan.
Cheryl: We got scammed by a brewer. We bought cans of beer that didn’t exist. The guy wasn’t from our community, though. He was some guy from the internet with a hipster beard who turned out to be a complete asshole.
Zach: But we overcame all the odds and opened six and a half years ago.
Cheryl: December 18, 2017.
Zach: We’ve had this building for 10 years. For many of those years, we had no idea what we were doing. The rainwater was backing up, so we fixed the storm drains. The roof was leaking, so we fixed the roof. Then we had the space and we could record the album!
Cheryl: We could build a music studio here! We could build an artist loft! It’s a dream come true.
Zach: But none of that was enough to cover the HVAC costs. So it wasn’t until we combined the whole idea of a radio station, a pizza parlor, and a microbrewery that we were able to figure it all out.
Cheryl and I literally did the work. We took down the tin ceiling in the kitchen and rehung it in the dining room. We sandblasted and painted. We laid the floors. We did the drywall. We put in the beams. We literally built it by hand.
Cheryl: When we originally purchased the building in 2007, we created the most cheesy business plan for renovating the building—if I sent it to you, you would laugh so hard. We just wanted to have a chat with the bankers.
Zach: But that was before bankruptcy, when they were still looking for bodies in cemeteries to borrow money. We bought our house as a duet, and we were dealing with a Fannie Mae foreclosure loan for $32,000, and the mall financier said, “You know, it would be a lot easier if you took out a $100,000 loan,” and we said, “Well, Trombone and Accordion Duet Don’t you understand? ” We were the beneficiaries of that terrible credit environment.
Cheryl and I both worked in the hospitality industry. We also worked as musicians in bars or restaurants. For years, I would stand there with my tuba and a liter of Spaten Pils—I played music, got drunk, and took everyone on a journey. We were the face of the restaurant. But we would ask ourselves, “Who made the money tonight?” The answer was, “Not us.”
Cheryl: Apparently, there weren’t a lot of restaurateurs! But when we started SQZBX, it took off immediately. It was like, “We created a monster.”
Zach: Based on the projections that they gave us for the business loan, which was the projections for the first year, we basically doubled it.
Cheryl: The first day we opened, I sold $1,000 worth of pizza. That’s when I knew it was going to work. Then it became the standard, but then it wasn’t enough. It’s still shocking to me that you can sell that much food in a day, because this isn’t even a big town.
Zach: Our bar is beautiful. It’s hand-built. We borrowed all these details from music stores. The back of the bar is made out of pianos. I could walk you through the building and talk for hours about every little detail we did. People really feel it. It creates an environment where people feel special.
We have a large following of locals who are regulars who keep coming back, and tourists who seek us out and try our services when they come into town. We have great reviews online.
We make everything, too. All of our pizza dough is made from scratch every morning. All of our beer is brewed by me. All of our vegetables are hand-cut daily. That’s it. We just create great products in a beautiful setting, and we provide great service, and because of that, we make sales every day.
Cheryl: We have approximately 30 employees. We are open seven days a week for lunch and dinner.
In the beginning, our kids helped out. For example, they helped me program the point-of-sale system. But I didn’t want to rely on them, and neither of them was very involved. Our son loves working here, but our daughter is not going to be a restaurant owner.
Zach: I would also like to point out that they spent their youth either on stage or behind the scenes with us, and both of them are studying for technical degrees at university.
Cheryl: I think it will be passed down through the generations! We also stopped performing. We never performed on the SQZBX stage.
Zach: We built a stage and played a few shows before the business started, but it was too hard to go from being a boss to a musical clown. We also found out that live music just didn’t work. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we took down the stage and replaced it with boxes. Auditoriums make money, but live music doesn’t.
But the radio station continues! We Low PowerWe are run by volunteers, so anyone who shows up can play whatever music they want. We try to avoid playing music that other stations in town are playing, but otherwise I invite people to share their musical experiences with our listeners.
One of the things we do is maintain a very open and inclusive environment, and I think people respond to that. Our PR is relatively apolitical, but you walk in and you get the sense that this is a place that is not afraid of diversity. I believe that helps our business.
Cheryl: You have to be consistent, you have to be excellent. When we were in the planning stages of the business, people would say, “People don’t know the difference between good cheese and bad cheese, why would you care?” We care. And I think for that, we are rewarded every day.
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