Meet Billy Burch | CEO & Fizztender

We had the good fortune of connecting with Billy Burch and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Billy, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
After a 20 year career in hospitality, I had grown accustom to the long hours, late nights and holiday’s spent away from my friends and family. It wasn’t until I met my now Fiancé, that I had truly realized the toll this had taken on my happiness. While first dating, she worked in corporate sales traveling often during the week. I worked off hours and most weekends. We struggled to spend quality time together. However, hospitality has always been my passion. Then in the summer of 2019 while traveling in Europe, the idea to create a mobile cocktail experience from the back of a vintage Italian truck was born. We came home and immediately started planning our tiny mobile business. Not only would our future business allow me to continue to create memorable experiences for others, it would also allow us to spend more time together. In January 2020, Fizzy Beverage Cart came to life, bringing much needed changes to our lives {and others!}. Little did we know, a global pandemic was just around the corner.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
From a young age, it was always my dream to start my own restaurant. I loved everything about the industry. The rush I got from a busy dining room on a packed out Saturday night was electrifying. I loved the comradery of the teams and the pride I felt when seeing the joy our service brought to our guests. Unfortunately, the higher up I got on the hospitality totem pole, the more the industries pitfalls began to ware on me. The long hours and constant stress started to take it’s tole on my personal life. Essentially my childhood dreams were met with the harsh reality of what owning a restaurant was really like. However, our little mobile bar business was the opportunity I needed to still create those memorable experiences for others, but eliminate some of the draw backs of owning/operating a full service restaurant.

While our business might look pretty simple, it’s been quite a process to get here. From importing our pint sized Italian trucks, to restoration and build out. It has been a total grind. Even things like marketing have been a huge challenge to overcome. In our minds, we figured it was really cool and people would just find out about it. But that’s just not how things work. To make matters worse, we literally launched a company that caters to private events right into the start of a global pandemic. We were challenged by the fact that no one would see us in action, because all events had been canceled. We spent the summer following the start of the pandemic going out and hustling. We set our truck up in driveways and neighborhoods, doing anything we could to stay relevant and pivot. That was ultimately what make us successful. We hosted a little pop up event for a client that made a post in a Mom’s blog about how much fun we made her son’s birthday. Within 3 days we had received over 100 inquires. The very next day I gave notice to my full time career and never looked back.

Now, almost two years in, I wish I could say it’s a breeze, but it’s honestly not. Every day brings new challenges. We work more than we ever did in our corporate jobs. We push hard to ensure we continue to exceed our clients expectations for every event. However, we do it because we love what we have created by ourselves. The pride that comes out of that is a huge driving force to keep us going. We have also become better at setting boundaries for ourselves and creating work life balance. Running our own company, it’s easy to do nothing but work and forget that creating this company was our way to better our lives together. It took time to set these boundaries, but it’s critical to the overall success of our company. As I like to say, we can’t fill others cups if our cups aren’t being filled.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
We live on the east side of Atlanta, about a half mile from the Beltline’s eastside spur. Most everything we love to do on our days off is a bike ride away. I would suggest hopping on the bikes and hitting up the newly expanded Muchacho for coffee and breakfast tacos, shopping at Ponce City Market, dinner at Two Urban Licks and maybe a show at the recently completed concert venue, The Eastern. Along the way there are plenty of amazing murals, public art and Tiny Doors to take in. Off the bikes there are at least 20 amazing craft breweries and a couple of distilleries to check out. If you feel like doing something super high energy, attend an Atlanta United match at the Mercedes Benz Stadium. Atlanta is a big little city, in that it has so much to offer without really having to go far. You just have to know how to find it.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Oh, wow! I could never pick just one person to credit our successes with. Entrepreneurship takes knowledge of so many skills, and it takes a village of people to teach that. From my parents teaching me the value of hard work and loyalty at a young age, to the owner of the first restaurant I worked for taking the mop out of my hand and taking a couple minutes to teach me how to properly mop a floor. I picked up a little bit my whole life which helped mold me into the entrepreneur I am today. If anyone deserves the biggest shout out, it would be my amazing fiancé, Casey, who helped me jump the corporate ship and start my own business. Without her love, support and consistent nudging, I would have never been able to make this transition. I needed someone to look at me and say, “I got you”, in order to feel like I had that safety net. It’s no easy task to leave steady income, benefits and other perks of corporate life to take a leap towards what you think will be a better quality of life running your own company. But I’m happy to report, we made it! And we wouldn’t take it back for anything.

Website: getfizzyatl.com getfrothyatl.com

Instagram: @getfizzyatl @getfrothyatl

Facebook: @getfizzyatl @getfrothyatl

Image Credits
Sarah Vitel Photography @sarahvitelphoto