Meet Bambi Pride-huff

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Bambi Pride-huff. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Bambi, really appreciate your meeting with us today to talk about some particularly personal topics. It means a lot because so many in the community are going through circumstances where your insights and experience and lessons might help, so thank you so much in advance for sharing. The first question we have is about divorce and how you overcame divorce and didn’t allow the trauma of divorce to derail your vision for your life and career.

We started our business post 2 divorces. Mine from my now ex husband, who was less that ideal as a husband. It just didn’t work. Coming from a relationship that was not kind and being told i was. Dumb/ stupid made it hard to believe I could do it but i knew i had to push past and believe in myself to heal myself. Not an easy task. My husband was coming from a rather abusive past partner that fought hard in the divorce process, and caused him to become ill and lose his CDL holding career. He had always wanted this for our kids to have a future of generational income that would surpass us. We both believe that it takes a lot of work to push past that trauma and believe that you are doing the right thing and make the best of what is in front of you. We both are driven to show our children ( the son he raised in his past marriage) and our daughter together that no matter what if you believe in the dream you can make it happen.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

South of 20, LLC started out as a joke between me and my now husband when we started seeing each other. both going through rather difficult divorces. we had known each other through my now ex husband as they had been room mates in college. I lived in north dallas and my now husband lived in Ennis about 45 min. south of dallas. having to drive through the heart of downtown on 45, most of the time in the middle of Rush hour traffic. I would be on the phone with him and jokingly say “oh my just get me south of 20.” this is was so traffic would get better. when he got sick and lost his CDL loosing his career and our only income with our daughter on the way we had to figure something out. I was running our E-Commerce Amazon FBA business Southern Small town goods. It wasn’t making enough to support us though. My husband dream his whole life was to own a restaurant/ food truck. a family member had a cafe in Historic Down town Sanger ( I know most people dont know where that is… its 15 min north of denton and 45 min. south of Winstar World Casino at the Oklahoma boarder.) with this now being added to the business that we were going to run, my husband said we need to do an LLC for the businesses. we went right back to that joke that we would always say to each other, it just worked, and south of 20,llc was born. my mother in law made the choice to purchase that cafe and we opened Aug.4th,2023 with a 1 month old with us all the time. it was a rough road with a 2 month closure due to unforeseen equipment problems and an insurance claim that had to be filed. we didn’t quit though we redesigned our menu, tested out new options, got new equipment and figure out how social media could become our best friend for being a community that did not want outsiders in to become a profitable cafe. we reopened and made a lot of friends with the regular customers that we had. it was a fun journey. in that we were asked to do catering for corporate events a lot and being that we had a little human with us on a 2.5 hour drive to the cafe 6 days a week, we just couldn’t do the catering to. when our lease was up we looked everything over and made the choice to move into a food trailer under the same name Bear’s cafe, a name sake to our late dogs, my husbands service dog, and my late grandfather Norman Pride who had Big Bear in Indiana when my father was a teen. we now operate out of a 20ft concession trailer for Bear’s cafe serving catering needs for events as well as residents events at apartment complexes around the DFW and Austin. Since my last article with voyage we have changed up the menu and got our permit for my husbands hometown of ennis. We are doing a lot more big events also. The menu changes include Brisket chili for the winter and Waffle Buns. We have included a Mac n cheese bun for burgers.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I would say the ability to see the problem that is in front of us problem solve, think fast of a strange out of the box pivot to solve that problem. The other area of knowledge is do the research of the area you are in. Also, customer service is a huge one. If you are interacting with the public like we do in the food industry learn how to properly interact with the customer.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

The current challenge we are faceing on the bears cafe front is new markets and getting our name out there. As far as our e-commerce business Southern Small town Goods, it is going through a hard transition to drop ship. We are having to learn with that business how to go from resell on amazon FBA to our own drop ship product and the new platforms and as well as how dropship works and digital prints work on the platforms. We also have the 3.14R^2 that we are trying to finalize a menu for to start to roll out a phase one for on Bears cafe’s trailer. All of this with a very energized and want to help with everything 2 year old.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.bearscafesangertx.com
• Instagram: https://Www.instagram.com/bearscafesangertx
• Facebook: https://Www.facebook.com/bearscafesangertx