Oral History Program Kym Buttschardt Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 26 September 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Kym Buttschardt Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 26 September 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Buttschardt, Kym, an oral history by Sarah Langsdon, 26 September 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Kym Buttschardt September 26, 2013 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Kym Buttschardt, the owner of Roosters Brewing Company and Restaurant, conducted by Sarah Langsdon on September 26, 2013. Kym discusses her experience as a business owner in Ogden and Layton, including the rewards and challenges of running a business on historic 25th Street. SL: Kym, why don’t you go ahead and just tell us a little bit about where and when you were born. KB: I was born in Ogden, Utah, on May 8, 1967, at the old Dee Hospital on Harrison. SL: Growing up in Ogden, what are some memories you have? KB: I grew up in South Ogden and I do not have memories really of going downtown except to ZCMI -- I remember going there -- but I don’t have memories of Union Station or 25th Street. I think it was something that we probably avoided. I don’t really know if we avoided it, it just wasn’t on our radar. I do remember going to some of the shops on Harrison, but I don’t remember coming downtown too much. I do remember my family bought a restaurant, Sandy’s Fine Foods, when I was nine years old. That is my memory. From nine years old until I went to college because I worked really hard in the business with my family. SL: Why did you decide to open a restaurant? KB: Do you want the whole story? It’s kind of a long story. I grew up in the restaurant business, Sandy’s Fine Foods, which my parents started almost from scratch, and I swore I was never going to be in the restaurant business. I literally worked there and helped raise my mother and stepfather’s second children and I saw 2 how hard they worked and that was nothing I ever wanted to do. I was going to be an accountant. I graduated from Bonneville High School, and I got a scholarship from the University of Utah and I got my degree in accounting. Through college, on the other side, to put myself through housing and stuff, I worked at the market street restaurants in college, which is where I met my husband. We both worked at the Market Street Broiler, and I was a server and he was a bartender. He was from Philadelphia and I was from here, and I was going to work in Washington D.C. when I graduated. I got a good job with Price Waterhouse, a public accounting firm, and I went to Washington. He had, back then it was quarters, two more quarters and then he was going to come and meet me. He was from Philadelphia and we met at the U and he was going to come east. In the time that I was out there and had this great job, doing my dream and being an accountant auditor, my family was approached by the city, because they’d had a successful restaurant. They were starting with Union Station first and they wanted to revitalize and they wanted my parents to come open a restaurant in the Union Station. My stepfather had the foresight to call my boyfriend then, who is Peter, and say, “The city wants to…” He had an entrepreneurial spirit, but he didn’t necessarily want to open it, but he wanted to be involved. So, they shook hands, but this was before they had even talked to me and my boyfriend then, Pete, my husband now, called me and said, “Your dad wants me to do this.” I called my stepdad and said, “What are you thinking? You don’t even know if we’re going to be together and I don’t know if I’m ever coming back to Utah.” He said, “It’s not really about you, I just like Pete.” I was 3 like, “What?” So they kind of shook hands and had a green ledger paper out, they bought all the used equipment they could find. There was no formal agreement, no loan, nothing. Pete just immediately moved up here into some basement, crazy, scary apartment that was super cheap and just basically took the opportunity and went for it. My parents kind of helped him get started. He opened the Union Grill in January of 1991. I stayed out in D.C. for another couple of years and eventually I transferred back to Salt Lake with my company. He was still just killing himself at the Union Grill, and I also worked at Squatter’s my last year of college and I helped them open Squatters, so I have a good relationship with them. Eventually I transferred to Iomega up here and I was still making more money than him and it was just killing me to see that he was the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker there. So I kind of started helping him at Union Grill and eventually I was like, “All right, I’m just going to quit and we’re just going to do it.” We had gotten married in that time too. I joined him at Union Grill in that time, and that’s when we really took off, when I could focus on the front and the service and actually market the place and he focused on the back and the food and all of that. We did that and we were actually planning on adding a brewery to the back of the Union Grill where the art gallery is now in Union Station. We had talked about that because that was when it was all hot. We were approached by another couple, Judy and Lee, that used to own this building, and she had an antique shop here called, “Judy’s Attic.” She had bought the building pretty cheap when it was all ratty and opened an antique shop and they approached us about investing in her business. We said, “Well, why would we invest? It’s what we do.” 4 Eventually, we came to an agreement and we became partners in the beginning. We were partners in this restaurant and we did as much of the demolishment ourselves as we could and we were still working at Union Grill and the idea of Rooster’s was born and we worked side by side with her and her husband to renovate this building and get a big loan and nothing was happening down here at this point. There was a little bit, there was the Daily Grind across the street and a little bit of activity, but pretty dark and scary for the most part. We renovated it for a good nine months. Literally, I remember even painting those beams and I’d come home with just this black in my everything. Everything that we could do ourselves, we did. That was a credit to her because she did have some experience with that. I thought, “How is this ever going to look like a restaurant or brewery?” Eventually, the long-term of that is I couldn’t avoid my destiny, so I eventually went back in the restaurant business. SL: When did you open Rooster’s? KB: We opened Rooster’s in April of 1995. April 8, 1995. SL: Almost twenty years. KB: Yes. SL: You kind of talked about that Pete was the reason why you got stuck on 25th Street; were there any other reasons why 25th Street versus somewhere else in Ogden? KB: When we had our business at the Union Grill, you could tell that old building is special. Union Station is very special to us, so to see there were a few, I think Thomas Hardy was opened and you could see what a couple of the remodels 5 had done and also just because of its proximity to the mountains. It was clear that this could be something, just because of the views and all of that, so when we decided to do this, I don’t think we thought it through too much quite honestly, but there is something special about being down here. When you walk out to your car and you’re leaving at five in the afternoon and the sun is setting, it’s truly special. When we saw a little bit of reclaimed space and how it could look, because we used to have dirt on that end and this was all dirt and everything, so every little improvement we did was so well received by the community. Really, downtown because of the downtown core. When we opened we wanted to make Ogden and this place a place that our boys—we didn’t have kids then—that they would consider coming back to. I was never going to come back to Ogden, so it was kind of this conscious decision to say, “We want Ogden.” We love 25th Street. SL: What are some changes that you’ve seen on 25th Street since you have been here for so long? KB: The most remarkable thing probably is the changing of the guard of people that owned the buildings or the businesses. The sense of independent spirit. When I first came on the street, a lot of older people owned the buildings and complained about the city and what the city didn’t do for them. I was pretty much done with that, and I disassociated myself with that sort of attitude because I’m not looking for what the city is going to do for me, I’m looking for what I’m going to do for myself and my neighbors. I think the biggest thing that I’ve seen is just this collective effort and trying to get everybody into this collective good. If your 6 neighbor does well, you do well. There’s still always this sense of competitiveness, but also just the amount of young people that are down here now there are all ages and the walking traffic. There was never walking traffic, and now I notice it really because there’s no walking traffic at my Davis County place. There’s a lot of walking traffic, which there didn’t used to be that. SL: People are always afraid to come down because it’s sort of had that reputation of some place you didn’t want to be. I know you’re heavily involved in H25, how did that get started? KB: Well, originally, there was a group of older building owners that had something, there was something there, so when I started to go I realized that there was no purpose of that. So, really how it got started is Jo Packham and Sara Toliver-- Jo owned the building where Chappelle had a publishing company, which is where Von Con is now. They own that whole building and they originally opened Ruby and Begonia and the White Fig and they bought the building and the Olive and Dahlia. That was a little bit after Ruby and Begonia. The reason they did that is because they shot all these scenes for their magazines and they had all this extra cool stuff to sell, so they basically did a retail store down there. So, Sara Toliver, who’s the director of the CBB, when she and her mother came on the scene, that’s when we really started to roll. That’s when we really got some structure around what we were doing. We used Sara’s dad as an attorney to formally organize. Todd Ferrario owned the bistro, Heidi Howard from the City Club, there was a core group of us, it was Todd Ferrario, Joe, Sara, Heidi, and me. It was really through Joe’s leadership to start challenging the establishment 7 and start to include people and think, “We should have a farmer’s market down here.” The farmer’s market was already started at that point, but it was not nearly anything. That’s where those colored canopies came from that you saw and basically they were able to use their publishing company for some agendas and printing and all of that. I had already started in my own marketing, using Historic 25th Street as a hip, eclectic, just in my own thing. It all kind of lined up at that same time. I probably had the biggest advertising reach on the street that was going past Ogden. They had a national thing because of their magazines, so that’s really the core group of us that really came together. SL: What is it like owning a restaurant on 25th Street? KB: It’s awesome. It’s hard because our buildings are old and require a lot of maintenance, but what’s great is that there really is a sense of camaraderie with the restaurants. It’s like you can go borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor. It’s competitive, but we really are good neighbors to each other. Same with the retail. It’s a sense of pride for me because the public just receives it so well and they love to be in these older reclaimed spaces. There’s something special about that. It’s hard because the buildings are old, the parking is tight, but all those modern conveniences for us with the two level seating, or three level, we actually have four levels in this building. It’s a challenge, but it’s also cool. It’s kind of special, something to be proud of. SL: What do you think are some of the important aspects of being downtown and in downtown Ogden? 8 KB: I’ve kind of gone full circle, and I just think this is the heart and center of this community. This is the place for people to gather. All this great stuff that’s happening on our trails and the Junction and the River and all of this stuff, but this is still the heart of this city. It’s still the gathering space and with Union Station as the anchor and historic 25th Street, it provides a heart of a city and that’s going away in other cities. There’s just not, there’s obviously not the suburban sprawl in the anywhere U.S.A. of retail chains and all of that, but this is really cool to be a part of where all these local independent businesses have grown themselves. People come and go. We’re not all going to succeed at it, but people ask me this, it’s just so much more than just having a business, it’s being a part of a greater good of something. SL: What changes would you like to see happen down here? 25th Street or downtown Ogden. KB: I still want us to be lit up as our own corridor. I want the lights that go across the street and I want to figure out how we can do that. I would like to see the empty spaces leased. I really would like to see the Marion Hotel relocated because that is one challenge that we have is just kind of that element right in the middle of our street. My vision is always a cleaner, brighter, walkable street and that’s what I’m working to help and that’s really what the association, we market ourselves as a shopping and dining destination, but at the end of it all, we want the cleanest, brightest, safest street. It is a safe street, that’s not a thing, but that’s what I’m working toward. Also to keep it as independent as we can and we can’t shut down business, but our independence and our local vibe is what has made 9 us successful. I hope that, we have some pretty strong players on the street, but my hope is that eventually we can get all of the littler retailers to participate. It’s hard because it’s a pay to play deal and that we figure out some, we’re actually having a big strategic planning session next week to figure out how you can be involved if you have a really small business. I think this street is here to stay, so that’s where I’m putting my eggs in this basket. SL: More so than the Layton location? I knew you’d opened a restaurant in Layton. KB: Yes, and that serves its own purpose. It’s a high volume place and we do have Hill Air Force Base and all of that out there and that’s there to stay too, but I just like that this is really a central gathering space for the communities and now with the FrontRunner, it brings other people to our community. It’s really fun to see it discovered through other eyes, such as out-of-towner eyes, whether it’s out of our area, but especially out-of-state. People from out-of-state love this area, so it’s fun for me to just still see that discovered. SL: Thank you so much for taking the time. KB: Thank you.