We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jason Beter. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jason below.

Jason, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

Our story starts with buying into a small local franchise restaurant. A year into it I realized that it just wasn’t going to work. We were going broke and I had a decision to make. Either file bankruptcy or change our direction and try to save it. I had been traveling a lot for work and always found myself frequenting locally owned restaurants that featured burgers and local craft beer. My son who had decided that college wasn’t really for him said that he wanted to run restaurants. I told him that I’d been entertaining the idea of leaving the franchise, doing a complete 180 and doing great craft burgers and craft beers. He was on the same wavelength and already had a basic menu. We decided to take all the things that we love like metal music, art and Astros Baseball and incorporate it all into the restaurant. We added breakfast since that’s the only thing that did well at the original location. Oscar’s Breakfast, Burgers & Brews was born. There was a lot of research which luckily happened as I would travel for my job. We launched in February 2017. We quickly took off and had to expand to a larger location 2 years after we opened. Oscar’s became the thing that changed all of our lives. It helped us launch a new bar/restaurant 1861 Public House, which features amazing cocktails, craft beer, pizza, sandwiches and wings. 1861 has become the premier local bar that just happens to have amazing food. We have now secured the amazing property behind it, which will allow us to expand to an amazing outdoor area this Spring. I also started my passion project, Orbit’s Record Shop. My love for music and my earliest memories of learning about business operations took place in that shiop. What started out as my pet project has bloomed into a very popular record store. We are a brick and mortar record shop that specializes in vinyl. We obviously do well locally, but now have fans across the country and we regularly ship. Shortly after opening Oscar’s we said that someday we will brew our own beer. That day has finally arrived. In 2023 we secured a location next door to 1861 Public House and started construction on Micro Brewery. Köerber Beer Company was born and we are extremely proud of it.

Jason, 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 Jason Beter. I was a outside sales rep for a large electrical supply company. I had always loved the food industry, and was approached in 2015 about buying into a local franchise that focused on a niche product. I believed in the product and took the chance. The extent of my restaurant experience was working at McDonald’s from age of 16-21, but I wanted to make a go of it. Unfortunately it didn’t work out well and we decided to open Oscar’s Breakfast, Burgers & Brews. I was able to apply much of my business experience into the business and it’s been working so far. What sets us apart is that we won’t compromise on what we’ve done from day one. We refused to sacrifice our quality for speed. We refuse to change to inferior products to increase margins. We stay true to what we started as. That is probably what I’m most proud of, that we stay true and authentic and I think that translates to our customers. We use the same philosophy at all of our businesses that have come after.

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

When we started Oscar’s Breakfast, Burgers & Brews in 2017, we were in a tiny 1100 square foot space. We had 4 tables and 13 bar seats. We had to learn to maximize our space and move as many customers through as we could. By the time we left we had hit a ceiling. We couldn’t possibly handle anymore business. Once we mastered our operations there, we moved to a 5800 square foot location in July 2o19. None of the processes that we had at the original location translated to the new location. The old location was simply customers got up, the next sat down. We didn’t need to know how to manage a dining room. When we moved, we had an entire dining room to manage and we didn’t know how. The kitchen operations were completely different. We had to re-learn everything. When we finally got our feet under us and mastered the operations at the new location, the pandemic hit. We had to quickly adjust and learn how to become a 100% takeout restaurant. We quickly adapted and became many peoples choice of restaurant because we stayed well ahead of the curve when it came to safely serving food. We implemented a whole system that our customers loved and added a bit of normalcy to their lives during a very abnormal time. Once the indoor dining came back, we had expanded our dining room and build a large outdoor dining space, so we had to adjust again and learn to handle the even larger space. At the end, we came out much stronger. We never stop though, we are continually looking to take the next step to improve our customer experience.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

When I bought into the original franchise, I convinced my father in law to loan me twenty two thousand dollars. If you have ever started a restaurant, you know that it might as well just be a thousand dollars. I managed to stretch that 22k out and buy everything we needed and remodel. Once we decided to leave the franchise and start Oscar’s, I sold some of the old equipment to help pay for new equipment and remodel, and I borrowed around ten thousand dollars from my Mom. The rest is history. I then pumped all of the money that we made back into the restaurant and kept building from there. I left my job 8 months into it so that I could focus on it full time. For the move to the new location, I took out a short term loan to do the build out, and again, continued to reinvest the money we made back into the restaurant. When I built our next restaurant 1861 Public House and the record shop, Orbit’s Record Shop, I was able to finance the bulk of both with money that we had saved from our initial business. I did take out a small bank loan for some of it, but made sure not to over extend. With the brewery that we are building I have used personal funds as well as small bank loan. I try to stay as debt free as possible.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.oscarssbbb.com , www.1861publichouse.com, www.orbitsrecords.com, www.koerberbeer.com
• Instagram: @oscarsbbb @1861ph @orbitsrecordshop @koerberbeer
• Facebook: facebook.com/oscarsbbb , facebook.com/1861publichouse, facebook.com/orbitsrecordshiop, facebook.com/koerberbeer

Image Credits
Karissa Stanley