THE SODA PARLOR - 1.0 BUILD OUT
THE SODA PARLOR - 1.0 BUILD OUT As 2024 winds down, marking a full decade of my wild ride on the entrepreneurial rollercoaster (complete with loop-de-loops and questionable safety regulations),...
THE SODA PARLOR - 1.0 BUILD OUT
As 2024 winds down, marking a full decade of my wild ride on the entrepreneurial rollercoaster (complete with loop-de-loops and questionable safety regulations), I find myself reflecting on one particular chapter: The Soda Parlor. This isn’t just any old business venture; no, it’s a sticky, sweet, ice cream tribute to reckless ambition and root beer-fueled dreams. So here I am, writing a love letter—or perhaps a eulogy, depending on the day—to The Soda Parlor in all her glory.
Reckless Ambition: The Soda Dream
To tell the story right, we have to rewind to 2014. Picture it: I was 26, fresh-faced, and full of what I’ll generously call optimism (but what most people would call “zero clue”). I’d spent over three years in Corporate America, learning what it meant to stare into the void of mean girl office culture while secretly plotting my escape. Oh, the reckless ambition of a 26-year-old—so pure, so naive, so blissfully unaware of things like taxes or plumbing permits.
Meanwhile, Olan had just wrapped up his nationwide “Eat a Slice with Me” tour, which not only exceeded expectations but completely obliterated them. And when expectations get obliterated, new ideas are born—big, bold, slightly terrifying ideas. Enter: The Soda Parlor, a glorious hybrid of retail and restaurant that promised to be as unique as a cherry on a marshmallow sundae. I was brought onto the team with a to-do list that can only be described as “daunting.” Design the interior? Sure. Create the construction documents? Why not. Act as the general contractor for the build-out? Obviously. Then, once the Parlor opened, I’d become the General Manager, which, as it turns out, is just a fancy way of saying “the person who does literally everything to keep the business running.”
Location, location, location..
And so began the quest for the perfect location—a journey filled with hope, heartbreak, and a budget tighter than a pair of skinny jeans circa 2014. The original plan was ambitious: relocate Olan Rogers Supply (now known as Star Cadet) from California to Nashville and find a building where The Soda Parlor could thrive up front while the print shop and headquarters handled business in the back. A dreamy combo, right? We actually found the perfect spot—like, cue the angelic choir levels of perfect. But as fate (and business realities) would have it, our partner overseeing Olan Rogers Supply, at the time, just couldn’t take the leap of moving the print shop and his family cross-country. Totally understandable... and completely gut-wrenching.
I vividly remember the moment Olan called to deliver the news. I was in Las Vegas at a trade show for art publishing, surrounded by the harsh fluorescent lighting of convention hell. Imagine me, in a sea of cheap home decor art, dutifully swiping through images of mass-produced "live, laugh, love"-esque pieces on an iPad, all while my soul slowly melted into a puddle. Call me an art snob, because I absolutely am. That night, I cried alone in my hotel room, not over the art (though it deserved a few tears), but because I was so desperately ready for a new chapter in life. It was maddening. I had this oddly perfect trifecta of skills—corporate retail experience, a degree in interior design, and childhood summers spent on construction sites with my general contractor dad. It felt like I was made for this next venture. Yet there I was, stuck in limbo, questioning everything while Vegas neon blinked mockingly outside my window. But when I got back to Nashville, Olan and I had a “screw it” moment—the kind of decision-making clarity that only comes when you’re utterly fed up. If the print shop wasn’t moving, so be it. We’d forge ahead anyway.
The dream of The Soda Parlor wasn’t going down without a fight. Olan found a small space, and let me tell you—we thought it was PERFECT. Affordable? Check! Nestled inside a gorgeous, turn-of-the-century factory warehouse? Double check! The building housed other small businesses, giving it that scrappy, creative-community vibe we were craving. Oh, and did I mention the outdoor area under a vintage water tower? It was like the universe handed us the ultimate 2014 hipster starter pack. You could practically hear the mason jars clinking. The landlord assured us the space would be ready for build-out in April 2014, so I made the leap and left my cushy, well-paying job on March 27, 2014. Was it risky? Absolutely. But reckless ambition was practically my middle name at that point.
And so it begins..
I rolled up my sleeves and dove headfirst into the construction document phase. Armed with guidance from my architect mentor, the ever-brilliant Paul Boulifard, and my General Contractor dad, Paul Vaughn, I set out to turn this cozy 800-square-foot space into a multi-functional marvel. This wasn’t just any space; it had to house clothing, ice cream, and serve up soda—basically, the Swiss Army knife of retail and food service.
Honey-Glazed Wood:
The Memphis Detour
June 2014 let me tell you—it wasn’t bringing any sunshine to my life. I’d been making regular visits to the shop, hoping for signs of progress, but the space still looked like a post-apocalyptic escape room. There were no windows, a gaping hole in the floor, and unfinished hardwood that screamed, “Please don’t step here unless you enjoy tetanus.” Stressful phone calls with the landlord had become a daily ritual, with him promising the moon but delivering, at best, a handful of dust.
At this point, instead of building shelves and cabinets on-site as planned, I packed up and drove to Memphis to work in my dad’s workshop. My thought process? “If the landlord isn’t ready, I might as well get ahead of the game and pray everything fits when we go to install.”
Now, here’s the twist: this detour turned out to be my favorite part of the entire build-out process. I learned so much working side by side with my dad. We planned material costs, created cut sheets, and sourced supplies—all while staying on a budget. The aesthetic we were going for was raw materials: B/C-grade pine plywood and pipes (because nothing screamed 2014 hipster like pipes and unfinished wood).
With a borrowed pipe cutter and threader, we cut and threaded nearly 200 pipes for the displays I’d designed. It was oddly satisfying in that "industrial chic meets sweat equity" kind of way. For the bar tops and tables, we sourced live-edge heart pine slabs, which sounded fancy and expensive but were surprisingly affordable. However, the romance ended the second sanding began.
Heart pine is the sappiest wood known to mankind. Imagine trying to sand honey-glazed tree trunks—it was like a battle between me and nature, and nature was winning. We obliterated belt sander after belt sander. But after days (and days... and days) of scraping and sanding, those slabs looked incredible, like we’d paid top dollar at some bougie artisan woodworking shop.
Four weeks of casework building later, I headed home, excited to finally start installing plumbing, building walls, and bringing the vision to life. Surely, after all this time, the landlord had gotten his act together, right? RIGHT?!?!
Permits, Cheetos, and Bureaucratic Nightmares
The build-out was an emotional roller coaster, complete with stomach-dropping twists and an unrelenting sense of, "Wait, what now?" After weeks of tweaking the construction documents, pushing the landlord for his electrical plans we were finally ready to pull the permit. This was my first foray into the mystical world of building permits, and let me tell you, it was an initiation I will never forget.
Back then, the permit office was like stepping into a dystopian DMV from the late '90s. Sure, they’ve modernized a bit now, but in 2014, it was all paper forms, fluorescent lighting, and an ambiance that screamed "abandon hope all ye who enter here." You had to show up at 7 a.m. just to get in line, and once you were in, you stayed—no bathroom breaks, no mercy—until your number was called. After what felt like three lifetimes of waiting, I was finally escorted to the first desk.
Let’s call this guy Chuck. Chuck was snacking on Cheetos, his fingers gloriously dusted in orange powder, typing away on what I can only assume was a government-issued logitec keyboard. He didn’t even acknowledge my presence for a solid 10 minutes. Ten. Full. Minutes. I just sat there, watching this man eat Cheetos, pondering the mysteries of life. Finally, Chuck graced me with a few cryptic questions, to which I made some very educated (read: desperate) guesses, and I was shuffled off to the next stop: Water.
Oh, Water. If there were an Olympic event for bureaucratic nonsense, the water department would take gold. Apparently, changing the use of a space to include a restaurant dramatically increases water and sewer usage—fair enough. What wasn’t fair? The math. They used some complex formula to determine our fee, and then—get this—they rounded the fine up to the next thousand dollars. You read that right. If the fee came out to $2,001, you were paying $3,000. It was legal highway robbery. I can’t remember the exact number, but I do remember staring at the bill, thinking, “Our government is a scam. Got it.’
Next, I was off to the fire department, where things got... interesting. They looked me dead in the eye and casually mentioned that they knew the building and didn’t particularly like the landlord. Why? Because he outright refused to install sprinklers. You know, the things that keep buildings and people from burning down. This was my first red flag about our landlord. Hindsight is 20/20, but at the time, I was too deep in the trenches to care. Luckily, the fire department passed me on to the final boss: plan review.
At plan review, I sat down with the code inspector, who handed me a delightful checklist of ADA notes and adjustments to make. After a few tweaks, I finally secured the permit. Cue the confetti, balloons, and exhausted cheers. I had survived the gauntlet, permit in hand, and it only cost me my dignity, a few thousand dollars, and a lingering grudge against orange-dusted Chuck.
The Mob Boss of Beverages
July 2014. The space? Still untouched. Our landlord? Still MIA. At this point, I was convinced he was operating on some kind of anti-time, where days stretched into eternity and nothing ever actually got done. Meanwhile, as we waited for progress, we started to meet our neighbors in the building.
Now, you’d think meeting your small-business neighbors would be a warm, welcoming experience, right? Wrong. Enter Garage Coffee and its owner, whom I will forever refer to as the self-appointed Mob Boss of Beverages. When he asked to meet us, we naively thought, “Oh wow, how nice! He wants to welcome us to the building!” Nope. Not even close.
Instead, this man sat us down and essentially accused us of infringing on his coffee empire with our soda and ice cream. Yes, you read that right—soda and ice cream. Because apparently, there’s only so much room for liquid-based happiness in one building. To add insult to injury, he immediately went and added every item on our menu to his, including a coffee float. A coffee float! The audacity was honestly impressive, if also wildly infuriating.
This experience stuck with me for years, mainly because I could never wrap my head around it. Small business is hard enough without sabotaging your neighbors. Who has the energy to be that petty? I mean, did he wake up every morning thinking, “Time to protect my coffee kingdom at all costs”?
Over the years, I’ve done my best to channel the exact opposite energy. I’ve tried (and hopefully succeeded) to create a vibe of collaboration and community, rather than the cutthroat competitiveness that Garage Coffee radiated like a bad cologne. I know for a fact we brought more customers into that building—probably even rivaling Antique Archaeology, another neighbor of ours. But honestly? Screw that guy. He’ll forever be a cautionary tale of how not to do small business.
Food Bribes = Progress
Mid-August 2014. The moment it all came crashing down. I officially lost my actual damned mind. Picture this: me, on the phone with the landlord, engaging in a full-blown screaming match. I’m talking Oscar-worthy levels of rage and frustration. Did it accomplish anything? Nope. Not a thing. He continued to sit on his throne of broken promises while I stewed in a pit of despair.
That’s when I realized something had to give—and it wasn’t going to be him. If I wanted this thing done, I had to take matters into my own hands. Enter: the bribery phase. I started tracking down his workers, who were scattered across the building like lost characters in a video game. These were not unionized professionals. Oh no. These were the kind of unlicensed, slightly sketchy handymen who probably got paid in cash and compliments.
But desperate times call for desperate measures. For two full weeks, I took these guys out to lunch, sweet-talking them like my life depended on it. And guess what? It worked. The magical combination of food and flattery got them to do two weeks’ worth of work that hadn’t been touched in months. Months! I became less of a General Manager and more of a mob boss orchestrating an under-the-table construction coup.
Another fond memory from this time was during one of the many inspections we did while waiting (and waiting) for the space to be ready. On one such visit, we noticed something… alarming. One of the building’s—and more specifically, our space’s—major support beams was exposed to the elements on the exterior of the building. It looked like there had once been more structure around it, but time (or negligence) had left it completely vulnerable.
The real kicker? There was a massive gaping hole in the end of this beam—a beam I’d estimate was around 12 by 24 inches. Naturally, we thought, “Okay, maybe it’s not as bad as it looks. Surely, the hole doesn’t go that deep.” Spoiler: it absolutely did.
We ran a tape measure into the hole, and it just kept going… for feet. This beam wasn’t just holding up the floor above our space—it was holding up the floor above that, too. Needless to say, I immediately brought this to the landlord’s attention.
His response? “Oh, it’s no big deal.”
Let me tell you—I was not about to let this building collapse on me, my team, or our future customers. So I (very politely) said, “No, it is a big deal, and you will fix this.” And fix it, he did. But not in the way any rational person would expect. This man—dead ass—had his team go into a space two suites over, chainsaw down another structural column, and drag it into our space. They braced it under the completely rotted beam, stepped back, and proudly declared, “There, all fixed.”
Except, of course, it wasn’t. Not only was the original problem far from solved, but he’d now actively undermined the structural integrity of another part of the building.
So, while the landlord slept soundly at night, I spent my evenings wondering which would come first: finishing construction or having the whole place collapse like a bad game of Jenga.
Finally, in September 2014, progress started rolling. The floors were finished (hallelujah!), the plumbing was underway, and the walls were going up. Was it perfect? No. Was it a long, painful slog? Absolutely. But at least, for the first time, I felt like we were moving forward instead of sinking into an abyss of sawdust and broken dreams.
The Final Sprint: Tile, Tears, and Terrifying Deadlines
October 2014: The final sprint—or, as I like to call it, the "how much can one person emotionally and physically endure" phase of opening The Soda Parlor. In less than four weeks, we built out the entire space. Cabinets? Installed. Concrete countertops? Poured. Lighting? Hung. Everything. The clock was ticking, and so was our bank account. If we didn’t get those doors open soon, they’d never open at all.
To say this month was stressful would be an understatement. The electrician hired by the landlord—let’s call him Ghost Electrician—no-showed more often than not. At one point, thanks to him, we failed an inspection that would have given us working electricity. So, naturally, we rigged up a terrifying network of extension cords running from the hallway. OSHA would’ve been thrilled. Meanwhile, the slightly crooked walls of the space made it impossible to fit some of the cabinets we’d painstakingly built off-site.
But through all the chaos, there were two unsung heroes who held it together: my dad and our dear friend Jake Sidwell, who was also set to be my assistant manager once the space opened. They showed up every single day, putting in more hours than anyone should in a single lifetime. One of my most vivid memories was the night we hit the milestone of installing the tile backsplash. It was a big deal—it meant we were finally turning a corner.
That day, we worked a full shift, then at 8 p.m., we found ourselves at Home Depot grabbing white subway tile. As we closed the trailer door, Jake and my dad looked at me, relief on their faces, as if to say, “Finally, the day is done.” Except it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. I hit them with: “So... we’re installing this tonight, right?” Evil, I know, but the plumber was scheduled to install the sinks the next morning, and the tile had to go up before that. So there we were, installing tile well into the wee hours.
Laying tile is oddly satisfying—until you hit the part where you have to cut it around outlets and weird edges. We were nearly done when my dad was trimming a tiny piece with a Dremel tool. In an instant, despite wearing safety glasses, a shard of tile flew into his eye and stuck there. Cue an emergency room trip in the middle of the night, followed by a visit to the eye doctor the next day. I felt awful for pushing everyone so hard. But my dad, being the trooper he is, didn’t hold it against me... much.
Fizz and Failure
And then came the pièce de résistance: the equipment—most importantly, THE soda fountain for THE SODA PARLOR. This wasn’t just any soda fountain; this was a sleek, vintage-style, single-head beauty from Lancer Corp, complete with a pull lever that screamed “classic soda jerk vibes.” Per the sales rep, this baby was supposed to be a breeze to install. Just plug it in, follow the manual, and voilà! Soda magic.
HAHAHAHAHA. Oh, how wrong they were.
After a few days of my incredibly mechanically inclined father trying to make sense of this thing (while also burning through every ounce of his patience), and after hours on the phone with tech support, we finally admitted defeat. The manufacturer begrudgingly sent out an expert, who managed to get the fountain working... for all of 48 hours.
Yep, you read that right—48 hours. The machine froze up entirely, refusing to dispense soda, which, as you can imagine, is a slight issue when you’re opening a soda parlor. Cue round two with the experts. Turns out, the machine was faulty, and we’d need a replacement. Oh, and the replacement? It would take weeks to arrive.
In the meantime, the techs had a genius workaround: turn off the internal refrigeration, crack the machine open, and have us manually throw ice on the lines to keep them cool. That’s right—we were now part-time soda fountain babysitters, sprinkling ice on this fancy contraption like it was a diva needing constant attention.
This machine, by the way, is not done tormenting us. It’ll make another dramatic debut in my next blog because, as they say, hindsight is 20/20. At the time, though, it felt like the soda gods were laughing at us.
The Soda Parlor Opens: Chaos, Tears, and Victory
Fast forward to October 15rd: We finally had power and were set for our final building inspection. I was a bundle of nerves, convinced we were going to fail. But we had a backup plan: even if we didn’t pass, we’d open anyway. (Fun fact: code inspectors don’t work weekends—don’t tell anyone.) When the inspector handed me the pass tag, I collapsed onto the floor and sobbed. Relief doesn’t even begin to cover it.
And then came October 25th, 2014—the day The Soda Parlor officially opened its doors. We had a line out the door and sold out of everything. It was pure chaos in the best way possible, far exceeding anything we’d dared to hope for.
But as anyone who’s ever opened a business knows, the real work was just beginning. Running it every single day, 7 days a week, 12 hours a day? That’s a story for another blog. Stay tuned. =)
