We were lucky to catch up with Alivia Cunanan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Alivia, thanks for joining us today. Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

We always promised ourselves that we would never let work control our lives. We work so we can travel and see the world! So many people always say “I could never do that, or there’s no way we could go on a trip like that”. We always tell them that if they want to go on a trip then they have to make it a priority. First they need to make sure they have employees who they can trust and are willing and wanting to step in and take over when needed. To do this you must make sure that your employees feel valued, and well taken care of. By paying our staff well (even more so when taking on more responsibilities), making them feel appreciated, we make it desirable for our employees to want to work for us and to take over when we are away. It should be a goal for you to get employees who you truly trust and create a relationship with them so they actually get excited to have the opportunity to show you they can do phenomenal job.

Alivia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Alivia Cunanan and I have been in the service industry for over 15 years now, and bartending for the last 11 years. My other half Casey has been bartending and managing several bars downtown Spokane for the last 10 years as well. We got the opportunity to take over Sipneasy in 2020 because we both had been wanting to get into the wedding industry with the end goal of having our own wedding venue, so we saw this as the perfect opportunity!

We have two super cute and trendy trailer bars, Moonshine and MJ which are perfect for weddings, rehearsal dinners, family reunions, and graduations! We also have our Barnwood Bar and Piano Bar which are both great for smaller or indoor events. However, any bar can be the perfect fit for any event you have!

We also have the cutest VW Photo Booth bus! We call her Grace The Boho Beach Bus!

We are considered a “dry bar” we require our clients to purchase the alcohol but we provide and do everything else (and I mean everything) in regards to your alcoholic drinks! We are here to make your event run as smoothly and stress free as possible. We help you decide the perfect selections for your event as well as calculate the amounts of each alcohol to purchase.

When hiring our company you’re not getting someone to just serve drinks. We love to get to know your guests and make them feel welcomed and special. We are here to make sure you and your guests have the most amazing time and create an experience that you will always remember.

We pride ourselves with our extensive experience in bartending and you truly are in the best hands and can honestly not have to worry about a single thing!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Starting in July 2023 we began the hardest season of our life. It started off with getting the news my dad had 3-6 months to live. Next, in August, the Lahaina fire in Maui happened where my two brothers and their family not only lost their home but their entire community. A few weeks later the Oregon Road fire occurred in Elk, WA where my dad’s entire property burnt where we didn’t get to get anything out of it. We then moved him into our house and we began being his 24 hour caretakers. With the trauma and devastation of the fire and losing everything, combined with his already vulnerable state, my dad passed away on September 14th. A month later my sweet Gracey girl of 14 years, started having seizures out of nowhere and we had to put her down. With my dad’s passing we inherited his pregnant dog, which ended up needing emergency surgery after the last puppy was born because she had a stillborn stuck inside her. They then had to keep her over night and the next day because it went sepsis. So we had to syringe feed 8 puppies every 2 hours. All this occurred the same day we put down Grace. In October the construction of our pole barn began, but ended up with them starting everything completely wrong, and then ghosting us for 2 months and changed their phone numbers. Leaving us with 2/3 of the money out plus materials and demo costs. When I tell you that it was the hardest thing in the world to continue to run a wedding bartending business during this, IT WAS THE HARDEST. But by the grace of God and the love and support from all of our families and friends, we made it through. We dug deep and fought to find the strength to continue our daily lives instead of let the unfairness of life overcome us.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson we had to learn was to not be so trusting in people. With a Christian background we are always trying to see the good in people and have hope in them as well as give them the benefit of the doubts. In regards to our nightmare of a situation with our contractors, we bit the bullet on this hard. Because we are small business owners ourselves, there is nothing more than to support other small businesses owners. So instead of going for one of the big commercial construction companies we wanted to go with a small business owner because we know how much it helps them directly. Long story short, they lied to us about being licensed and bonded in Washington, they dug the wrong amount of holes, cemented all the posts into the ground facing the wrong orientation, cut all the girts and went to put the trusses on and they were short since the posts were the wrong way. After this they completely ghosted us for 2 months and changed their phone numbers. And we are currently about to start a lawsuit against them because we paid them 2/3 of the total amount and they ruined a bunch of the material. But with this we learned that we can’t just fully trust people these days. That we need to do extensive research and get actual proof of everything when working with small companies. So we hope you do your research when you’re working with small businesses/contractors just so that you protect yourself!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sipneasy.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sipneasy?igsh=aHpvcHEzd3ZzN24x&utm_source=qr

Image Credits
@kcenglandphotograpghy @nwtolenimages @humblehoneyphoto