Aaron Becomes a Baker | The Buttered Biscuit in Bentonville, Arkansas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9haPuUNQIw
Northwest Arkansas Alive spotlight on the Buttered Biscuit in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Sam and Anna Russell Opening Second Buttered Biscuit Restaurant
Springdale, get ready because a Buttered Biscuit location is headed your way.
The restaurant is owned by Sam and Anna Russell, who opened The Buttered Biscuit in Bentonville on April 3, 2017, and it was an instant hit.
“We chose Springdale because similar to the same reason we opened in Bentonville: we are trying to fill breakfast gaps in the community, and it’s not too far from home to manage a store. We are trying to be the pioneers of breakfast in areas that lack breakfast options,” says Anna.
Depending on permits, the restaurant should be open by the end of 2019, Anna is aiming for a November debut. It is located at 1012 JTL Parkway, Suite D, in the Har-ber Meadows District, a master planned residential-business community.
The couple, who moved to Arkansas from Michigan in 2016, have wanted to open a second location for a year, but were waiting for the right spot.
The new venue will feature the same menu as its flagship in Bentonville which serves classic breakfast favorites with a Southern flair. The Russells source locally and regionally, cure their own sausage, and serve free-range eggs and Onyx coffee.
Favorite menu items include waffles, omelets, eggs benedict, and cocktails such as a lavender infused mimosa.
Aside from the staples, there’s a tabletop seasonal menu which features innovative fare. Anna’s favorite new fall option is an apple spice waffle with maple cream cheese, sprinkled with candied pecans and crowned with sweet whipped cream made in-house (The Russells love waffles and make them every Sunday morning).
“Sam and I primarily come up with menu options but we have a team we brainstorm with. We have avocado toast which has been a huge seller in the summer. Having a small menu more seasonally-based gives us the opportunity to try new things before we put it on the main menu. We want new ideas but keep our favorites. It gives us flexibility,” she says.
The new location is 3,000 square feet and will seat 95. The Springdale restaurant will boast a full espresso bar and extended hours on Saturday and Sunday, open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
When asked if she’s considering franchising, Anna says she’s not sure.
“I think we see more locations happening but we are taking one opportunity one store at a time and then reevaluate. We feel like it would be a shame not to continue to grow because it’s been meeting such a strong demand. I just got a request to come to Chicago. We are in a constant phase of reevaluating,” Anna says.
They will either bring in a manager or promote from within. The venue has raked in the awards, named Best Brunch and Best Breakfast in 2018, and Emerging Business of the year from the Bentonville Chamber of Commerce.
Anna has a background in restaurants and HR; Sam worked for Kellogg’s when he was transferred to Arkansas. The restaurant was so successful, he resigned from his fulltime job a few weeks after opening.
They never expected to work together but it has been amazing, she says.
“He has the corporate background I don’t have,” Anna says. “I never imagined I’d work with my husband but it’s a huge gift. We love the flexibility and we are on the same team. We make each other strong and fill each other’s gaps. I am so thankful the Lord willed it to be this way. It’s beyond what I dreamed possible.”
This article was originally published in AY Mag by Juliana Goodwin. To see the article click here.
The Buttered Biscuit: Dishing Out Breakfast with Southern Flair
When Sam and Anna Russell moved to Bentonville in January 2016, they immediately noticed a void in the dining scene.
“We have an incredible lunch scene and anything you could want for dinner, but the breakfast niche was missing,” says Anna. “Why is no one filling this void?”
Breakfast is Anna’s favorite meal and she’d eat it three times a day if she could.
Anna has a background in restaurants and HR; Sam worked for Kellogg’s and was transferred from Michigan to Arkansas. While she was gardening one day, Anna says she had a vision of opening a breakfast venue. She went in the house, started calling brokers and the next day met with one. She hired a restaurant consultant, bought a building, started social media accounts, and a year later, her vision came true.
On April 3, 2017, the Buttered Biscuit opened and was an overnight success.
In no time, they were cracking 7,000 cage-free eggs a week.
To date, the restaurant has served 220,000 customers.
“That is amazing to think we served that many people in two years. It was so successful from the get-go and blew away all our expectations. We were conservative with how we ran our numbers. It was so successful it replaced my husband’s income and he resigned a few weeks after we opened,” says Anna.
The menu is a classic breakfast with a Southern flair. They are known for the waffles which have won several awards. (Waffles are a Sunday staple in the Russell household.) The strawberry cheesecake pancakes make customers swoon. Order it with a side of hormone-free, cherrywood smoked center-cut bacon.
Anna recommends the omelets.
And of course, don’t forget the biscuits and gravy, made fresh daily. They bake 1,500-1,700 biscuits a week. They cure their own sausage for the gravy. What they don’t make in-house, they source within Arkansas.
“Our ingredient focus is local because we know the importance and value,” she says.
The venue has raked in the awards, named Best Brunch and Best Breakfast in 2018, and Emerging Business of the year from the local chamber of commerce.
Aside from big plates of delicious fare, the Russells are trying to provide a positive work environment and offer employees health care benefits, paid time off, matching IRA funds.
“We are really trying to be on the cutting edge to take care of our staff. That’s something a lot of small businesses do not do, for good reason because it is so challenging. The restaurant industry is pretty unstable and if we can help bring some stableness to people’s lives, they may continue to grow with us,” Anna says.
The couple are already considering opening another location in the region.
Anna is in the restaurant two days a week because since moving to Bentonville, they’ve had two little girls, Savannah and Charlotte. The girls are 1 and 2 so this mom tries to balance motherhood and work.
Anna laughs and says while she was raised in the Midwest, she’s a Southern convert.
“It’s a wonderful part of the country,” Anna says. “We love the outdoors, the culture, all of Northwest Arkansas and the community vibe. It’s been fantastic. We are so grateful to the community for supporting us.”
This article was originally published in AY Mag by Juliana Goodwin. To see the article click here.
Buttered Biscuit breaks into breakfast scene
For Sam Russell ’08 and his wife, Anna, opening their own breakfast restaurant was a family affair and a fulfillment of an entrepreneurial dream that had been ten years in the making. When The Buttered Biscuit opened its doors last April, Anna said she never imagined the success they have experienced in their first year open for business.
“The first week that we opened, the response from the community was overwhelming,” Anna said. “It was incredible the people that came out and supported us and have continued to support us. It’s been a wonderful success. I’m a firm believer that if you’re honestly meeting a need in the community, it doesn’t guarantee success, but it increases your chances of that business’s success.”
For the Russells, their restaurant’s food, made entirely from scratch, has been recognized for two awards: Best New Restaurant in Northwest Arkansas and Best Breakfast Restaurant.
“I think what really shocked us was the Best New Restaurant, because there’s such an explosion of a culinary scene in Northwest Arkansas that to be honored with that award is just incredible,” Sam said. “Both of those we felt very humbled to win, we were very thankful, and ultimately give the glory to God.”
Sam said the path to starting their restaurant was a marathon, not a sprint, and combined both his and Anna’s backgrounds in business — his in corporate marketing and sales, and hers in restaurant management and entrepreneurship.
Prior to the restaurant’s opening, Sam worked for Kellogg for nearly 10 years, starting as a summer sales intern while he was still a student at Hillsdale College. This set him toward a career in sales and brand management, and provided a lot of free food, Sam said.
“Back when I was an intern, one of the cool bonuses was that I got free Kellogg cereal sent to my dorm,” Sam said. “All of the sudden, I would have tons of cereal lined up in my dorm room, and I’d give away free cereal to the hall and pretty much everyone. I used to have at Tony the Tiger poster in my dorm room every year, and I would have 600-700 signatures of people who had visited my room, most of them to try the free cereal.”
Sam also served as the first president of Hillsdale’s chapter of Students in Free Enterprise, now known as Enactus. Sam said he credits his involvement with SIFE for fostering his passion for entrepreneurship and brand development. It also helped him land his first Kellogg internship.
“Sam was one of the really dynamic leaders at Hillsdale,” said Rich Rudolph ’85, who helped found Hillsdale’s Enactus chapter. “It’s been really exciting to see his career path and all the things that evolved out of his involvement with SIFE.”
Once he was hired full-time by Kellogg after graduation, Sam moved to several different positions involving sales and brand management, ultimately working as a senior brand growth manager. While working for Kellogg, he helped sell brands to Wal-Mart and also helped develop and improve different Kellogg brands such as Famous Amos cookies and Murray Sugar-Free cookies.
“At one point, my formal title was senior manager over commercial innovation, which is a fancy way of saying I brought new Cheez-its and Keebler cookies to the market,” Sam said.
Shortly after the Russells were married, they moved to Bentonville, Arkansas, for Sam’s work.
Anna said the idea to start a restaurant surfaced after they moved, when Anna was looking for business opportunities after leaving her family’s restaurant and real estate business where she had worked since high school.
“I really appreciated that my parents introduced me to business at an early age,” Anna said. “It’s part of my blood at this point. They gave me an amazing amount of experience in restaurant operations and menu design, and that whole industry.”
The couple said they realized there were not any local breakfast restaurants apart from some national chains, and began looking into options for starting a restaurant of their own in March 2016.
“Breakfast is the best part of the day,” Anna said. “It’s before anything good or bad has happened, and we get to make a great impression with a hot breakfast and serve it to our guests. I think it’s a really great platform to be able to offer Bentonville and the surrounding area.”
In the meantime, while they searched for a building and developed the branding concept for their restaurant, Sam continued working at Kellogg.
One day while scrolling through food pictures on Pinterest, Anna stumbled across the photo that would lead her to the restaurant’s name, The Buttered Biscuit.
“I wanted to embrace the fact that we’re here in the central South, but I also wanted it to explain what we are, and what better way to do that than to have a food image as a name,” Anna said. “It was just a really fitting name. It’s comforting and welcoming, and it clicked with me. I love to bake and cook, and we have a running joke in our family that how much butter we go through is ridiculous.”
It wasn’t until September that they found the site for their restaurant, but once they did, they made an offer on the building and immediately set to work transforming the building. Anna said Sam would come to the restaurant to help with preparations after finishing his workday at Kellogg. Sometimes they would be at the building past midnight, Anna said.
Only 40 days after closing on the building, The Buttered Biscuit opened on a Monday morning in April 2017.That Friday, Sam handed in his two weeks’ notice to Kellogg so he could focus on running the restaurant.
“We realized to make this work, we needed to be all in, and we had the traffic volume to do it,” Sam said.
Now, the Russells spend their time running their restaurant, raising their two young daughters 3-year-old Charlotte and 3-week-old Lydia, and staying active as volunteers in their community through Rotary Club.
“The commitment level of embarking on a new business venture in a new market in a new town, and also becoming new parents, it’s been a strong passion of mine,” Anna said. “It’s really been amazing how it’s come to fruition with a lot of hard work and sacrifice. It’s been a really incredible, rewarding journey.”
This article was originally published in The Collegian by Madeleine Jepsen. To see the article click here.