We were lucky to catch up with Ashlee Starr-anderson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ashlee , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Quality control is a challenge almost every entrepreneur has had to focus on when growing – any advice, stories or insight around how to best ensure quality is maintained as your business scales?

We are months away from hitting our 2 year anniversary since opening our small business. Within that time frame we grew faster than we could imagine. This includes hiring employees, running 2-3 different events on the same day, expanding our menu, purchasing a trailer, selling merchandise that our customers actually purchase and wear.

With this growth we always ensured that our quality stayed the same, no matter what event or location you purchased from. It’s the best when we have returning customers get the same drink every time because they know exactly how it is going to taste, just like the previous time they came to visit us. Consistency is key, our employees know what is expected when it comes to quality over quantity. We work at a fast pace because you have to in this industry but that never stops us from always making sure the quality of our drinks is changed.

We train our employees on what makes us stand out from everyone else when it comes to the beverage business and all of our customers can tell. Our crew cares just as much as we do when it comes to customer service and that will always make the difference in your business.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My husband and myself originally started Salty Rock Beverage CO. to be mobile bartenders at private events. We wanted to market ourselves to get our name out to bring in clientele. That is where it all started, we decided to serve lemonade and limeade at our local farmer’s market (you can’t serve alcohol to the public) and we fell in love with the small business community. We then decided to go a different route with our mobile beverage services and not only focus on bartending services, but to be apart of community events such as farmers markets, pop ups, grand openings, while still offering catering options for private events. When we first started this business with our mobile bar, bartender tools, we never thought we would go in the direction of the food truck industry but now that we are here, we like to think we were always meant to do this it just took us longer to figure out the route we wanted to go.

I think any victory or accomplishment, big or small is enough to be proud of because you never stopped and kept going to make it happen. We started from nothing and made our vision turn into something. We had no prior business experience, any idea on how to manage a business, employees, expenses, we took a leap of faith and never gave up. There was plenty of times we wanted to just stop and go back to our “normal” before Salty Rock.

We love that along the way of our business expanding we have met some of the best people and made the best of friends in the small business community. We make it a priority to give back to our community, one of our mottos we live by is “community over competition.” We always let our customers know that we appreciate the support more than we know and wouldn’t be able to do this without them. One of our biggest accomplishments we were able to do this year was pay off student’s past due lunch balances, being able to do that will always hold a special place in our hearts.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

When working in this fast paced industry you have to ensure trust in your team. Once you train them on what is expected you have to trust them that they will incorporate what they learned but have their own way of doing it and that is ok! We all are exhausted at the end of an event but we were able to knock it out because we all played a role in the way things flow and being able to trust each other makes it that much easier! We would never ask any of our crew members to do something we wouldn’t do. We always make sure our team knows they are appreciated, in big or small ways!

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

We met in 2019, Rikki walked into my work and we just clicked right away. Since then we have gotten married, bought a home, started multiple businesses, all while being full time parents to 2 young children, being employed full time, and I am full time student as well.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saltyrockbeverageco/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Salty-Rock-Beverage-CO-100092742878202/
• Other: https://linktr.ee/saltyrockbeverageco