We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tammy & Dennis O’Bannon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Tammy & Dennis , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job?
For myself (Tammy) the most important thing that I learned is customer service, from all my years of bartending and being a server is definitely what has helped our business thrive. I love interacting with everyone that comes to see us, getting to know each and every one of them. Seeing all the smiling faces everyday we open is the most rewarding to me. As for Dennis he has been an electrician for over 20yrs. and he has done so much for us when it comes to fixing both of our trailers, I am so thankful for him and his dedication to helping me with Hillbilly Grind.
Tammy & Dennis , 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?
How did we start? Well I (Tammy) had started a serving job in Goodyear as Dennis was working full-time as a Project Manager for an electrical company. I was 2 weeks into my new job and then Covid hit and I got laid off October of 2020, I was still looking for something to do and I found our 1st coffee trailer for sale in Instagram and thought HMMMM, what if we started a coffee business. Well the hubby came home and I ran the idea across him and of course he thought I was crazy knowing we didn’t know where to start as I have never been in the coffee industry, but with my bartending experience I thought what the heck lets do it. Well we met with the couple that was selling the trailer and the rest is history. We have been working our 1st trailer since December of 2020 and just recently opened our 2nd trailer and now we are also offering food. This is a new chapter in our Hillbilly Grind journey.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Well as I mentioned previously we were in Goodyear, AZ working the Phoenix area for 2yrs and in December 2022 we had to close our doors in that area and we relocated everything from our home to our business up in Golden Valley, AZ. That being said we are starting over from scratch in a new area. I refuse to fail so here we are and here we go. We have only been open for about 3 weeks now and so far so good as we are getting good feedback from the community, and we are so very thankful for the Golden Valley community welcoming us.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Well for starters, social media is hard to work when you do not know where to start and that was me (Tammy). I started our social media pages the second I knew that I wanted to get into the coffee business. I would make drinks at home and post wherever I could and I would use hashtags that I saw other coffee shop owners or baristas using. Once we got our first trailer I would post everything from the wrap going on the trailer to cleaning the machine and so on. My advice would be to follow others that are in the same industry and see how they post and what hashtags they use. It can get hard at times especially when you are the business owner and the social media creator, it takes a lot of work to post everywhere and to get people engaged and I am still trying to figure it out after 2yrs of it.
Contact Info:
- Website: Hillbillygrind.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehillbillygrind/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hillbillygrind/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/hillbillygrind/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hillbilly-grind-laveen