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Ellis County Business Journal | January 2016
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Happy New Year! As we welcome in 2016, our New Year’s wish is that it is another year of economic growth and prosperity for Ellis County. Without question, our county is in the midst of an extended economic boon. New home construction is on a record pace. New retail development is on a record pace. Manufacturing is up; as is the number of visitors coming to take part in our county’s many attractions and festivals. There is no shortage of reasons to feel bullish about our local economy. That’s where we come in, as this issue of the ECBJ is loaded with stories that highlight the strength and depth of our business community, making Ellis County a great place to earn a living. Every other month, the Ellis County Business Journal magazine continues to shine the light on businesses and economic development issues within the boundaries of our county. If you have a suggestion for a business you would like us to highlight, please let us know. You may email me at nwhite@waxahachietx.com , or give me a call at 469-517-1470. We sincerely hope you enjoy. On behalf of the Waxahachie Media Group, we wish you all a happy, prosperous New Year in 2016.
WA XA H AC H I ETX .CO M
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neal White Editor/General Manager Waxahachie Media Group
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January 2016 | Ellis County Business Journal | 3
When memories matter By shelly Conlon Managing Editor
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WAXAHACHIE — Shayna Byers and Barbara Hill know just what it takes to handle the complexity of a blushing bride-to-be planning her wedding and the mother of the bride who wants to make the day as perfect as it can be. The mother-daughter duo celebrated the one-year anniversary of owning of the newest wedding venue in Ellis County in November. And as they set their eyes on the new year, their focus is to keep Ellis County growth and affordability in mind at Willow Creek Wedding and Events Venue, they said. The pair wants to bring more families to the area and more couples to this side of Interstate 20, giving brides and grooms the flexibility to have a country wedding, with a lavish reception, however they can. “I have actually had multiple brides who are now moving to Waxahachie, because people don’t realize it’s only 30 minutes from Dallas.
Willow Creek wedding venue sparks growth in Ellis County
It’s just a straight shot down I-35, and Waxahachie itself is growing so quickly,” said Byers, who is the general manager of the facility. “All of our vendors are local, and we’re constantly pushing things like, ‘Here’s the hotel, here’s caterers from this area.’ My mom always says Waxahachie could be the next Grandbury with its downtown area, because we’ll go up there just to walk the shops and I feel like that’s what Waxahachie is moving toward. We can have an average of 20,000 people come through our venue a year. So, that’s 20,000 people that didn’t know Waxahachie even existed at times. So, it’s just really cool to introduce people to Waxahachie
because we’re only seven minutes from U.S. 77.” In the first year, the pair has booked more than 60 weddings, and was just named as a Best Wedding Venue for 2016 by The Know Magazine, which one of the most popular and largest media outlets that publishes content for couples planning to get married. “The first year was about trying to figure out what we’re doing. Just trying to figure out processes and how we need to run things and how we need to set up things,” Byers said, adding the focus has shifted on how to make the business even stronger and better. “Now it feels like OK, we’ve got it. We’ve got our routine down. We’ve got our employee base strong now, and everybody knows what they’re doing. So, now, we’re more of a well-oiled machine and now we can start jumping into getting our name out there now.” “We grow as much as our busi-
ness grows, and that just makes us that much more involved in able to have that much more fun with it,” added operations manager Allie Hocher. With that growth in mind, the two are looking at more options to provide couples on the big day, and how to work with more local vendors for planning purposes, Shayna said, adding this means anything from possibly developing wedding packages, to providing more table linen options, to even focusing on the differences between the personalities of brides-to-be. “Some brides want to come in and do every detail of every thing, and some brides want to come in and they’re like, ‘Here’s your cake. Pick the flavor. Here’s your flowers, pick the color. And here’s your wedding venue.’ And they’re like, ‘Awesome, done. I don’t have to worry about it,’” she said, adding she knows some brides are easy go-
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Ellis County Business Journal | January 2016
ing and others are in the middle of several life changes at once during the wedding planning process, from getting married, to moving to a new house, to selling a current house, to even changing jobs. “So, that’s something we’re looking into for the new year. It’s complicated because you have to coordinate with multiple
was getting her sales and marketing degree, and offered to come back to the area to help her mom. “I was like, ‘Let’s do this!’ and that was two years ago,” Hill said. “It didn’t take long at all to get all may paperwork in line for the bank or anything like that. What took the longest was find-
referred to them by city officials, they purchased the land and home from farmers who had tried selling their property for a year and a half, she said. “To them, it was a God-send because they got to go to Alabama
Photo by Scott Dorsett/The Daily Light
Willow Creek Wedding Venue owner Barbara Hill (above) and her daughter Shayna Byers (right), the general manager
vendors, and everyone’s schedule is different.” Willow Creek came about when Hill was doing interior decorating and designing for weddings, she said. When her decorating partner’s son got engaged, she started going with them to look at venues and she was surprised at the choices at how far away some of the venues were when it came to providing the kind of country feel that provided seating for 300 people with inside air-conditioning. “I kind of started doing some research and realized there weren’t any good options, especially in this quadrant of the Dallas-Fort Worth area,” said Hill, the owner. “Southlake’s flooded with venues. Weatherford’s flooded. Burleson’s kind of flooded. So there weren’t a lot of options over here. Plus I live in Cedar Hill and didn’t want to be too far away from the venue in case there was an emergency.” Hill started talking with her daughter, who was living in Nashville, Tennessee at the time. Shayna
ing the right property. Waxahachie does not have a lot of options when it comes to this kind of venue. I really like this area, because it is so close to Dallas. By having a country setting this close to Dallas, they just don’t have those options over there, so it just draws everybody over here. Plus, everything is only about 10 minutes away if you need anything.” Once they found the location,
where their grandbabies were, and to us, it was a God-send because he did such a good job with this property, we didn’t have to do a whole lot to get it cleaned up and straightened up,” Hill said. In fact, the pair turned the family’s home on the property into the bridal and groom suit and left the barn right where it was. They added a long, white, wooden bridge over a
trickling creek for a wedding aisle, a gazebo with a chapel bell at the top with hanging windows, and an indoor reception area that fits 300 people to dress up or down depending on the theme of the couple’s wedding. And within the past two weeks, they’ve even added a third building for office spaces, they said. “We literally booked our first wedding the day we closed on the property,” Hill said. “The homeowners were in the driveway, loading up a U-haul the day we took a bride over and toured the venue, and she booked the same day. That was pretty exciting.” And with enough online research and bookwork to make sure she understood the good and bad of what families wanted in a wedding venue, combined with her interior design skills and her daughter’s marketing skills, the venue took off, she said. “Between the two of us, we were able to come up with it,” Hill said. “Both my boys are married, and I knew what all happened to me personally at venues, and I talked with my friends whose children had recently gotten married, so I’m a big researcher.” That much thought and consideration into the customer’s need is a big part of what’s driving her business, they said. From allowing the bride more time to walk down
January 2016 | Ellis County Business Journal | 5 the aisle after buying an expensive they said. wedding gown, to more breath“With a wedding venue, there’s ing room for the photographers to such a broad spectrum of what’s ofwork with, to fered. You have Photos courtesy Willow Creek Wedding Venue the twinkling all this DIY, do gold lights it yourself stuff, that decorate and I consider the setting at us the middle of night and the the platform. We wooden swing offer a lot, but in front of we’re not going the red barn to break your beside the albank,” Shayna ter, it’s about said. “Then, you creating an inhave the really timate, memohigh-end venrable moment, ues that are very that doesn’t elaborate , but feel too comvery restrictive mercialized, on what you they said. It’s can use. So, in the two of her research, she them out there, and they’re always found the happy medium.” available for anything the bride and But that happy medium doesn’t groom need to make sure everything come without it’s challenges. Beis as relaxed and easy as possible, cause they are family, the mother-
daughter duo find ways to push each other to the next level, and occasionally aggravate each other because of different view points. But, that helps the pair balance each other out, they said. “I think I’m really smart and I think I’m really good at everything I do,” Hill said. “So, when Shayna challenges me, it aggravates me a little bit because I’ve been working for 30 years and have been successful at everything I’ve done. What do you mean we shouldn’t do it that way? That’s the way it’s always worked for me. So, she calmly and nicely says, in her 25-year-old voice to my 50-yearold voice, ‘I’m sure that was great, but what if...?’ She makes me see the younger side, the more up-to-date side.” “We were really close before this, so it hasn’t changed our personal relationship at all,” Byers added. “But now we just know how to come at each other business wise,” she said.
“From day one, she’s understood the kind of work space I need, and it’s good because I am all over the place, but she knows I’m going to get it all done. She knows I’m not just someone who can do a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.” To see the joy on a couple’s face at the end of the big day is all that matters, and that feeling is contagious, Hill said. “We can do 150 weddings a year, and that would max us out every single Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” Byers said. “If we can do 100 weddings a year, that would be a happy number. That’s where I want to sit, and where we’re not going crazy because we’re still in the learning process.” “And we learn from every event,” Hill said. Like the Waxahachie Daily Light & Midlothian Mirror on Facebook and follow both on Twitter. Contact the newspaper offices at 972-937-3310.
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Ellis County Business Journal | January 2016
Midlothan’s housing boom Officials say city is experiencing ‘hyper growth’ By Bethany Kurtz Midlothian Mirror Managing Editor
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MIDLOTHIAN — As more and more land in Midlothian is sculpted into roads and home lots, and as roof tops continue to pop up like daises, city and school district leaders are aware of the challenges that will follow. “The bottom line is the MISD as well as the city of Midlothian are experiencing hyper growth,” said Midlothian ISD school board president Todd Hemphill. The numbers back observations that the rate of growth in accelerating, said the city’s planning director Kevin Lasher. After dropping to about 200 homes starts a year at the peak of the 2008 recession, the city staff expect to see more than 400 new home building permits this year, surpassing pre-recession numbers. At the beginning of December, 391 permits had been issued in 2015, he said. “We have definitely recovered from the losses”
Photos by Scott Dorsett/The Daily Light
Lasher said. While the housing market is booming again, it would be a misconception to assume growth is a new idea in Midlothian, Hemphill said. “We have tripled in population in 15 years and the district has doubled,” he said. “We probably would have been further along, but we aren’t because of the recession.” As the city grows, current roads and schools will no longer be sufficient, said Hemphill and Midlothian Mayor Bill Houston. “The city was developed around state highways so we haven’t had to spend millions of dollars to develop roads,” Houston said. “We are having to put in roads that are fully city funded. That is where the tax money is going to go.” The city is currently working on several projects extending 14th Street south of Midlothian to relieve traffic along Farm-to-Market 663 from the large number of homes being built in the area and building the new Community Park to serve sports and recreation needs of the are and the growing athletic population in the city. The city will also continue to add police officers and firefighters to the ranks to keep up with the increased risks a larger population brings, Houston said. As more homes are constructed, the district gains about one student for every three homes, Hemphill said. The district is constructing its seventh elementary, Deloris McClatchey Elmentary School, to open for the 2016 school year. It is also the final project of the 2011 bond, which approved $97.3 million for a second high school and an addition to Frank Seale Middle School. The school district has room for more students at all grade levels now, Hemphill said, but the board of trustees is aware of the pressing need to be prepared for the future. It took three tries to pass the bond package approved in 2011 and as the growth rate increases, the district needs to be proactive and not responsive. “We know we will need more elementary schools, a third middle school and to finish out Heritage. As you become a bigger district, you have to do a more strategic bond than a just-in-
January 2016 | Ellis County Business Journal | 7 time-bond,” he said. A strategic bond provides the district leaders a way to finance facilities further in advance and respond to changes in student numbers more easily, he explained. “We will need new facilities so every kid has a level playing field from facilities to teachers and capacity stand point,” he said. “We don’t want to have overcrowding.” Staffing new facilities or administrative positions is not a problem the district expects to see, he said. “One of the great things about MISD is we always have an abundance of applicants for any positions whether it is a teacher, aid, food provider or bus driver,” Hemphill said. “People want to work here and we can select the best candidates. As a district grows, I don’t see any downsides to that. It will open new positions and opportunities to hire.” While the schools continue to attract a large number of families to the city, the ratio of less than one new student per new home is proof the city is attracting other demographics, Houston said. People are also attracted by the easy access to the Metroplex. “The north side of Dallas has grown so far that unless you work in Plano, it can take an hour to get to downtown,” he said. Studies have shown about 1,000 a day move to Texas, Houston said, and many of those settle in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. While much of the growth earlier were families moving to Midlothian for the schools, those same families are in turn attracting a new kind of new residents. “We have experienced a role reversal since 2000. What has happened, people moved to Midlothian and brought their kids. Now, their moms and dads are retired and want to be closer to the kids and grandkids. A lot of people moving here are older. To be honest, that is why we moved here,” Houston said explaining he and his wife moved to Midlo-
thian to be closer to their sons who settled in Ellis County. “Now, there are three generations of Houstons living in Midlothian.” Growth is also coming from within Midlothian, Lasher said, as couples or small families who moved to Midlothian years ago buy new homes. As families grow, many look to move into larger homes in the same city, he said. As more people move in for any reason, keeping a major attraction, the small town feel, is going to be up to the city and it’s residents, Hemphill said. “What I believe is that special community feeling everybody talks about is people, not schools or development or retail. Midlothian hasn’t been a small rural town for a while. People are coming here for the same reasons everyone else came here. They want good schools, good housing, good community and good transportation to DFW,” he said. “It is up to the city to keep that community feel going. We have a lot of great things in the city. I remember sitting in the stands at the first Heritage football game and seeing everyone cheer them on. It’s about giving kids a chance to do the things they enjoy and parents joining them.” The small town feel attracts many residents but the city is transitioning away from the cotton and dairy farms that dominated its early years, Houston said. “There are not a a lot of farmers coming out of schools and those that are, are talking about thousands of acres,” he said. The land that used to be farm land is providing the land for the new homes, Lasher said. The area south of Midlothian has seen the most growth. “You had a bunch of ready land owners who were willing to sell along 663,” he said. “Those land owners saw a chance to cash in their investment.” Between the third quarter of 2014 and the second quarters of
2015, 214 homes had been closed in the Mt. Peak Elementary School attendance zone that covers most of the FM 663 corridor south of U.S. Highway 287, according to information MISD’s demographer compiled. But retail is also coming to Midlothian as the city’s population reached an estimated 22,000 people this year, Houston said. “There is a certain level that attracts retail. At 20,000 to 25,000, those retailers or their site selectors start looking,” he said. “The Webbers, the developers bringing Kroger to Midlothian, they found us.” But shoppers in Midlothian don’t just come from the 54-square miles included in the city, Houston said. Many shoppers travel to stores like the Midlothian Walmart or Brookshire’s either through personal preference or for selection, he said, and the increasing sales tax revenue will play a role in improving
the city as well with out having to burden residents with more taxes. Retail growth is a positive for the school district, Hemphill said. “You get the benefit of the tax money but it is not associated with more children like a house would be,” he explained. Two areas that will be expanding in the next few years are on on U.S. Highway 287. The Diamond J development east of the city is expected to include 3,170 lots, amd the Winsor Hills development west of the city that is currently undergoing rezoning should include 700 lots, Lasher said. Contact Bethany Kurtz at 469-517-1450 or email bkurtz@waxahachietx.com. Follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ BethanyKurtzMidloMirror or on Twitter @bethmidlomirror.
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Ellis County Business Journal | January 2016
Downtown redevelopment project nearing completion By anDreW BranCa daily light Staff WritEr
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WAXAHACHIE — The redevelopment of the five former Ellis County office buildings located on Franklin and Rogers Street is nearing the completion. The buildings are set to open sometime in the first quarter of 2016. The project has had several setbacks and delays since the buildings were purchased by the Jim Lake Companies from the County in July 2013. Developers Jim Lake and
Amanda Moreno-Lake provided an update on the project to members of the Waxahachie Chamber of Commerce on Dec. 2. “It has taken longer than we anticipated. We had to put an elevator in the (former) tax building (on Rogers Street). It was something we did not plan to do. That is something that had to be done to meet the American with Disabilities Act requirements,” Moreno-Lake said.
January 2016 | Ellis County Business Journal | 9 “So those are the kind of things that come up even if the building is historical and the city is promising that you don’t have to do it, but state and federal makes you do it. That was an expense of about $140,00 that we didn’t anticipate.” Moreno-Lake said another unexpected expense was the installation of a sprinkler system in one
Photos by Scott Dorsett/The Daily Light
of the buildings at a cost of about $80,000. This feature had to be added to the project because the use of the building was changing. Other delays cited by Lake include a change in the building code that delayed the project by four to six months, causing the civil and structural engineering plans to be re-engineered. According to previous articles in the Daily Light, the project was scheduled to be completed by June but the date was moved. The construction was then estimated to be finished this fall. Moreno-Lake said she estimates that construction work should be completed by middle of January and the buildings should be up and finished in the first quarter of 2016. “When we submitted our plans to the city we didn’t know what
exactly kind of uses were going to come in. So we could not submit a floor plan to them because we didn’t know who was going to come in,” Moreno-Lake said. “So we have sped up the process and have hired our own architect. We talked to our tenants. They have given us a description of what they would like their use to look like. That has been submitted to the city and accepted. Now we are in the process of that.” The plans for the buildings on Franklin Street include space for retail shops, restaurants and residential lofts located above the retail spaces. With these buildings, the alley is going to be reactivated and a second building front will be added to the back of the building along with a boardwalk. Some of the businesses moving into the spaces include Multitudes, a women’s clothing, accessories and antique store; Fire House Clothing, a children’s clothing, furniture and toy store; The Ellis County Art Association; YaYa Foot Spa; and the Fish Grill. “A lot of people have taken notice since we have come to Waxahachie. We are not going to get it all right on the uses and there will be some that will cycle in and out
like we had in Bishop Arts,” Lake open, will be significant.” said. “We think that we have a good Lake estimated with the residengroup to start with here. I think that tial space in the Rogers Hotel, which synergy component, once we get it Jim Lake Companies owns, and the
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Ellis County Business Journal | January 2016
other properties, approximately 53 people will live in downtown. Working on the remodel of the Franklin Street buildings is Bluepointe Construction out of Dallas. According to its website, Bluepointe designs and constructs residential buildings, commercial offices and restaurants, industrial warehouses and factories. “Part of the delays was due to utility work. We ran into some problems under the ground. The rain was part of the big problem,” said James Bales, the project manager and vice president of BluePointe. “We were planning to be done here in the fall but the residential portion will be complete by the end of December. Then the retail portion will be midJanuary before they are completed. “There were some additional things they added to the building that were not a part of the original scope. In working with the historical folks, we want to make sure what-
ever the finished product is really fits in with the downtown area. So we did add some things to it as well. Some stone work, some transoms and the cap around the top of the building.” Bales said the total project is about 85 percent complete, but the retail portion of the project is about 15 – 20 percent complete. “I am really excited about the brick that they put on the outside as opposed to using the old brick. It is going to provide a really good feel for the downtown area. I think that everyone is going to be happy with product when it is done. It will look really sharp and fit the area really well.” Contact Andrew at abranca@waxahachietx.com or 469-517-1451. Follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ AndrewBrancaWDL or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ AndrewBrancaWNI.
January 2016 | Ellis County Business Journal | 11
Essentially Yours By alexanDra allreD daily light CorrESpondEnt
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Mother providing for daughters starts all-natural skincare business
MIDLOTHIAN — Karen McRorey will tell you it all began with goat milk but, actually, it started well before that. Once upon a time, soap was pure. Once upon a time, soap was made with animal and vegetable oils
Synthetic, petroleum-based ingredients replaced all-natural ingredients and in using phosphates, sales rocketed. The good news for the soap industry was that phosphate is cheap, strong and very effective. The bad news for unsuspecting
and minerals, mixed with alkaline salts. The earliest known soap recipe was discovered in the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, cir. 1500 BC, which described how these combined ingredients form soap-like material to clean and cure skin diseases. Over time, the process of soap-making was more art than science but eventually the “business” of soap-making became all business, and cheaper ingredients replaced all-natural products.
consumers and the environment is that these nutrients stimulate algae growth, which deplete oxygen in contaminated waters, destroying fish and plant life. As just one pound of phosphorus can stimulate more than 700 pounds of algae, it is easy to understand why Congress hopes to redefine “soap” and “detergent.” But one woman already has. While McRorey had not considered the phosphorus effect, she knew something was amiss with the
“beauty” in her skincare products. Few people know just how many chemicals are in today’s soaps, or that many are legally renamed as “beauty bar” or “detergent” because they do not legally qualify as soap. What she knew was that the lowerend soaps were damaging and harsh to the skin, but the all-natural soaps found in cosmetic stores were beyond her budget. “When I started making the skincare [products] it was an experiment and because of how much family and friends loved it, I started selling it to pay for this fun hobby,” she said.
McRorey has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. “I’ve always been on survival mode and have worked extra jobs to make sure my kids could have what they needed and at least one name brand pair of jeans, so they didn’t stand out from the other girls,” the a single mother of three said. She remained focused on keeping her daughters both happy and healthy. So when she began looking at the ingredients put in soap, her entrepreneurial wheels began to spin. “It occurred to me I’ll be retiring from my job in a couple of years and
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Ellis County Business Journal | January 2016
this would be the perfect job to substitute my income and lack of retirement savings,” she said. “I believe so much in this skincare that I know I made the right choice to sell.” Thinking about the single mothers, the young women in college, those facing retirement, or those who simply want a fair price for a great product, McRorey determined to keep the price as low as she could. “I’ve been there,” she said. “No, it’s not Walmart prices, but it’s certainly not Macy’s or Dillard prices either. The ingredients I use aren’t cheap, but I didn’t want cheap. I wanted luxury for cheap! Using natural ingredients regenerates damaged skin with new skin cell growth to eliminate fine lines and prevents wrinkles.” For McRorey, her entrance into the beauty industry was one of practicality. “It all started with goat’s milk soap I used from a shop in Bishop
Arts,” she said. “I stocked up on it and my girls loved it as much. Because I have several daughters, it started getting expensive. I love to cook and can usually figure out how to make anything.” And so she began to study the art of soap making. “It took eight months before I conquered the creamy lather I was wanting. I studied different oils and what was typically used for making soap and would leave the skin soft and not dry. As I learned what oils clean and what oils lather I learned the percentages,” she said. “Of course, studying oils I also learned the ones used in skin care and oils that don’t clog and also using essential oils for anti-aging, prevent wrinkles and those that lighten age spots or help with psoriasis and eczema. I use Argan oil in a lot of my products and rose hip oil. I use only oils that have benefits that destroy free radicals.”
McRorey then used an extensive list of friends and family members to test on. “I wish I’d done before and after pictures, but I had no idea how good it was actually going to be,” she said. For McRorey, the greatest endorsements she can get for her products come when people compliment her skin, which is often. “For me, I have a thyroid problem and my skin was very dry and I was starting to get more wrinkles. My moisturizer and scrub have taken care of the fine lines. It might be too late for the deeper ones, but I’ll keep using it,” she said, because it is the best. She charges $18 for an all-natural moisturizer for what she once used to pay $60 over the counter. “Most of the time they [consumers] have no idea what their putting on their face, but you can bet it is not natural products,” she said. “I’m not saying that my skincare works for everyone because it won’t. Because it’s natural, some people might have allergies to fruits, nuts, seeds, etc. and should check with their doctor first. It’s like other skin care you have to try to see what works for your skin type. I know I would never use anything else now.” In truth, McRorey has her daughters to thank for her successes. Because they loved the products so much, McRorey continued to experiment and expand her line of lotions and soaps. The plan had been simply to create skincare products that were natural. Today, her products can be found online and locally in Gemini Moon and Flowers by Roberta in Midlothian, Salon 708 in Mansfield, and Hair Design Group in Plano and inventory includes facial scrubs, whipped body butter, soap, moisturizer, and goat’s milk lotion. “I have scrubs for normal to oily, normal, and normal to dry. “It’s been fun experimenting with different essential oils and scents now that I have my recipes down.” It was so much fun, in fact, she jokes that her sons-in-law were
feeling left out. “So now I’m making beard oil!” All of this fun, however, must be worked around her job as a specification writer for a large architect firm. It is her job to write the book of materials that go into each project, ranging from airport terminals, healthcare facilities, to corporate headquarters and data centers. A far cry from the soap making industry, it is a reason that McRorey is so meticulous with her research and the most minute details, and it is why she is such a success. Like her day job, she has learned to write out all the recipes for her business. But this business, she hopes, will be kept in the family. “Ideally, I would love my granddaughter, Makya, to someday join me,” she said. “I created my oily/normal line in her honor. Any product I have that starts with Makya is for oily/normal skin.” Indeed, it is a young business that is only just beginning to grow. Almost apologetically, McRorey cautions would-be buyers. “I don’t always have every new product on my website,” she said, adding she is learning to manage her time, production, labeling, research and marketing. “But if you look on my Facebook page, I share what’s cooking in my kitchen, what’s new and the benefits of all the different oils.” Even better, the Essentially Yours website posts an ingredients dictionary. While many new businesses would be fearful of posting all of its ingredients, McRorey actually wants her clientele to be education in all things natural. Once they do, she wages, they will come back. For more information about Essentially Yours Skin Care, visit the Facebook page, essentiallyyourstx, or the website at www.essentiallyyourstx.com. Like the Waxahachie Daily Light & Midlothian Mirror on Facebook and follow both on Twitter. Contact the newspaper offices at 972-937-3310.
January 2016 | Ellis County Business Journal | 13
Tight Wallets By anDreW BranCa daily light Staff WritEr
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Red Oak business building loyal following
RED OAK — Tight Wallets Resale mission is to provide customers with high quality items at affordable prices. The store offers a wide selection that can meet almost any person’s budget and need. Owners Billy Burks Jr. and Alicia Burkes have turned their passion for resale into a thriving business
since opening the door in June. New customers continue to discover the store on a daily basis. “I know that Billy has always had the passion of picking up leftover stuff. People throw away some amazing things. He has always had a passion for stuff like that. He is very good about pricing stuff like that Photos by Andrew Branca/The Daily Light
very cheaply so that people can still afford it and we can have a business out of it,” Alicia said. “Pretty much every person who has come in here that we have talked to about the business said they have loved it and they are glad we are here.” Alicia said in addition to residents, employees from neighboring businesses and the Red Oak ISD staff have come out and shown support of the store. Tight Wallets Resale offers customers with a wide variety of items for purchase, from household appliances, furniture and indoor and outdoor items, to clothing, housewares, toys and seasonal
items. Tight Wallets accepts donations of items from the public can’t sell at garage sales. “We actually pick up garage sale leftovers and stuff that people don’t want. People can also drop off stuff they don’t want to our location. We take pretty much everything except for mattresses and old televisions, just stuff that is not ripped stained or torn. We try not to take any electronics that we can’t test ourselves,” Billy said. “We try to serve the community as best as we can. We want to give 100 percent attention to each customer. We just want to make sure that everybody is satisfied when
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Ellis County Business Journal | January 2016 “It got to the point where you would have to meet people at places. Sometimes, it was not so safe. It is easier to have a location where you always work and lock the door at night,” Alicia said. “We are excited. We have gone from online to finally being able to have our own store. Just over the last two months we have had triple the amount of people coming through the doors. We just can’t wait to see what God has planned for us.” The store is open 8 a.m. - 10 p.m. Monday, 10 a.m. -6 p.m. Tuesday –Thursday, 10 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Saturday and closed on Sunday. Tight Wallets Resale is located at 405 N. State Highway 342 in Red Oak. For more information, call 972-351-0439.
they leave.” Two of the biggest items the Tight Wallets owners say they have a hard time keeping on racks
and shelves are clothes and picture need of them. All clothing at Tight frames. Alicia said clothes sell pretty Wallets sells for a $1. quickly because they are priced reaThe store originally operated sonably and people are always in just as an online store, which made it difficult at times to operate.
Follow Andrew on Facebook at www. facebook.com/AndrewBrancaWDL or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ AndrewBrancaWNI. Contact him at andrew.branca@waxahachietx.com
January 2016 | Ellis County Business Journal | 15
Serving up a memory By Bethany Kurtz Midlothian Mirror Managing Editor
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WAXAHACHIE — Diane Gardner remembers when her mother walked siblings from their house on Parker Street to the corner of Rodgers and Franklin Street to
New downtown cafe brings a taste of the good ole days
working construction and hunting to feed their families, there are many happy memories, she said. “We never went hungry and we had good times,” she said.
Photo by Bethany Kurtz/The Daily Light
Above is Diana Gardner at the restaurant. This is a photo of her father and his siblings as a child. She had the photo turned into the restaurant sign, even incorporating the portion of the photo that had been washed out over the years.
Marchman’s clothing store because they had a “buy one pair of shoes, get one for a penny” sale. Now, Gardner runs a cafe called Remember When in the old Marchman’s building, serving up lunches and salads that remind her customers of the way it used to be, she said. “Most of my customers call it ‘grandma cooking’ because it tastes like their grandmother’s food. My grandmother did teach me to cook,” Gardner said. She remembers her father’s mother teaching her mother and then herself to cook, and the large family gatherings surrounding the end of a dove hunt or fishing trip, she said. Even though her father and uncles worked hard by farming,
Many of her memories of her mother, grandmother and cooking are tied to the city she can’t bare to leave, she said. “Waxahachie is just so dear to me,” Gardner said. Her parents met and married in Waxahachie, raised their family and had large family gatherings in the town, Gardner said. Gardner’s mother died young in Waxahachie as well, and she doesn’t ever want to leave the city she grew up in, she said. “My husband tried to move me away three times but he always had to bring me back,” Gardner said. “It’s hard to understand, but this is what I have left of my mother.” Gardner previously operated a
restaurant on College Street, but closed it about 25 years ago to have time to care for her grandmother until her death. Old customers of the College Street Cafe remember the location because she used a salad bar made from horse watering troughs, she said. She began looking for a location to open a new restaurant about five years ago and finally found a good spot on the downtown square in sight of the historic courthouse. Her memories led her to the name of her cafe, where she still prepared about 90 percent of the food, she said.
“When you go to a chain restaurant in Texas, or anywhere else I guess, and order food, you are getting food that is so preserved, high in fat and sodium,” she said. “But I remember when you could go into a restaurant and get a home-cooked meal. That’s what I want people to think about. Remember when you could do this or remember when you could get that.” Some of the dishes she serves are what her grandmother prepared or close adaptations, she said. When she prepares her grandmother’s chicken and dumplings, she always runs out and still has requests for
16 | Ellis County Business Journal | January 2016 more. She has never been able to es,” she said. “But if you are really “I was raised on food that was get her meatloaf exactly the way her interested in cooking, you will learn laden with bacon fat and lard. But grandmother could, but it is still in what goes together.” people were more active then so I high demand, she said. For example, spices that are avoid that,” Gardner said, adding that if a person wants bacon at her cafe, they have to order a sandwich it comes on.
Other recipes she created herself are based on the skills her grandmother and mother passed on. “As you grow up, you will come up with recipes from different plac-
of life we had is gone. It’s not going, it is gone,” she said. She hopes her restaurant helps the downtown area hold on to a bit of its history and helps many of her older customers relive their memories while shar-
good in pork sausage are worth trying as a rub on other pork dishes, she said. But she does take more modern health considerations into preparing her food, she said.
She finds other ways to flavor her foods, she explained. Rather than using bacon fat to flavor her beans, she uses smoked turkey, for example. Watching the city change is difficult, she said. Her fond memories of the movies include saving up glass bottles to return to the grocery store for 2 cents to 10 cents. If she and her sister saved up enough, they could go to the movies for 20 cents each on Tuesdays. “I’m kind of glad we are getting new stuff, but it is sad that the way
ing the older ways with each new customer, she said. “We have people who come to town from Arlington or Fort Worth and before you know it, they are back, saying we were here last week,” Gardner said. Contact Bethany Kurtz at 469-517-1450 or email bkurtz@waxahachietx.com. Follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ BethanyKurtzMidloMirror or on Twitter @bethmidlomirror.
January 2016 | Ellis County Business Journal | 17
H & H Grocery
A hometown store where everybody knows your name By Kate Bailey guESt ColuMniSt
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immediately as Mrs. Chambers said, “I just couldn’t see turning the store over to a stranger.” The Chambers, better known as MeMe and Poppy throughout Waxahachie, rarely go anywhere without a shoutout from people they have served for years! When Mrs. Chambers and her family took the business over they stayed open seven days a week out of necessity. Struggling to survive two lake closures, they pulled themselves up by the boot strings, expanded their kitchen area and started a successful deli, providing one of their
WAXAHACHIE — When you head south of Waxahachie over the viaduct where South Roger’s and Howard Street meet, you will find one of Waxahachie’s smaller, but thriving pieces of business history — H & H Grocery. This mom and pop grocery store was built in 1949 and opened its doors for business in 1950. Elva Huskins was one of the original owners, running and operating this retail business during a time when many women rarely owned businesses in this industry, building a common thread for the next 65 years. She built a cliental based on service and personal relationships. Providing fresh produce, fine cuts of
with Mrs. Huskins for 20 years. Hughlane was mentored by Alva who taught her the grocery business, including the financial han-
meats along with fishing tackle and popular bait, minnows. During this time, Waxahachie Lake was a huge attraction for fishing where families could find some convenience right up the road at H & H Grocery Store. Twenty years later, as fate would have it, another women Mrs. Hughlane Chambers became a trusted employee and worked side by side
dling of accounts. More importantly, they had grown the business into a customer-based business. They hired many young teenagers within the community, a tradition kept for years to come. When the time came for retirement, Alva offered her trusted employee an opportunity to buy H & H Grocery Store. Mrs. Chambers, with the support of her husband Hubert Chambers, knew
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Ellis County Business Journal | January 2016
most loved and profitable services lunch, snacks or necessities, cause a pause in our conversation and the to the community today. Throughout the interview, a past and the present collide. I notice Mr. Chambers ringing story unfolds much like watching
who makes a custom sandwich for a customer and she sits and chats with him while he eats his lunch. Both Meme and Poppy humbly reveal
This store is far from a private club as anyone who walks into this business is treated like a true friend. a movie. As each family member speaks of their individual and combined experiences with their customers, this article begins to write itself. Customers walking in to buy
up two particular customers and you can see a strong connection between these men, which I later find out spans 30 years. In another moment there’s, a granddaughter
their customers, new and old, stop in with their children supporting their favorite one-stop shop, connecting in a way only businesses like this can. Time moves on in business and so it has here as well, when in 2006 Janet and Bobby Napps took ownership of H & H Grocery. Janet, the Chambers’ daughter, has made her
mark in the store, bringing in new products but most importantly, taking responsibility for the stores current ownership and continues the history of working for their customers satisfaction… as she says, “giving them what they want in a personal way.” This store is far from a private club as anyone who walks into this business is treated like a true friend. Janet and her family have a synergy rarely found with this many family members. There is a deep devotion to each other and to their business progress and future. My final question rests with them all — the clincher as it were. How have you all maintained this level of dedication? Without hesitation they look at each other pausing briefly, yet with 65 years of business conviction, and say “leave a legacy.” Business 101. Waxahachie’s initial success grew out of a multitude of industries — transportation, agricultural, commercial and retail growth has been a huge part Ellis county’s continued growth. However, Ellis County today reaps the benefits from a strong heritage of small business owners. We call them the moms and pops, the world calls them retailers. Yet threaded into Waxahachie’s booming economy is a solid base of small, down-home business owners.
January 2016 | Ellis County Business Journal | 19
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