Three childhood chums, now in their mid-40s, lounge comfortably in animated conversation at Vino Boheme Wine Bar. Owner Kristy Petty, the trio’s instigator, sits across from Missy Barron, curled up on the corner of a couch next to Sara Dever, who listens and laughs as her friends recount stories from their grade-school days. Kristy and Missy, originally from Crosby, were already besties from second grade, and when Sara moved to town in junior high, the three bonded. The girls remained friends throughout high school, and afterward went their separate ways, but they remained close through life’s ups and downs: college, jobs, relationships, children, and now, as downtown Bryan businesswomen.
“As we began to get older, Kristy kept in touch with me,” Missy says. “She kept in touch with Sara, and then kind of by proxy, it always kept the three of us [connected].”
Eventually all three women found their way to Bryan College Station. First, Kristy arrived to attend Texas A&M University. She planted roots in Bryan, got her degree and eventually married, had a son and later divorced. Sara was a free-spirited traveler, living at various times in Europe, California, Colorado, and Utah and working all kinds of jobs; eventually, she became a Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) nurse. Missy went to college at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. “I came here every single weekend to hang out. So Kristy said, ‘Why don't you just move here?’” Missy recalls. Kristy was involved in a local theater company and got Missy involved, too, “which was so much fun,” Missy says. “That was a really big part of starting the arts in our— my life as an adult.”
Kristy’s story
“I believe in the power of community, of people being able to bring success to the greater good by collaborating, by bringing people together.” —Kristy Petty
In 2008, Kristy opened The Village, frequently referred to by locals as The Village Café, in conjunction with the art gallery Art979. “I love being around people’s creativity. I’m not an artist, I don’t paint,” Kristy says. “I really love being around art, whether it's music or theater — any kind of art.”
Her goal was to create a hub for creatives, and she and Missy often talked about the need for such a spot in Bryan. With her marketing and advertising skills, Kristy made it happen, launching the website art979.com in addition to the café; later, she helped create a publication within Insite magazine that spotlighted local artists and their work.
The food was a draw, and combining that with the Art979 concept made good business sense. Kristy had some experience in restaurants working as a waitress during college. “My joke is, I have enough experience to know that I don't ever want to run a damn restaurant!” she says with a laugh.
For a while, Kristy had a partner with outside financial backing who ran the restaurant, but the joint venture fizzled after six months. Kristy had to decide: Should she take over the debt that to let her partner off the hook? Kristy conferred with Sara’s mom, a savvy businesswoman and her professional role model. “From a business perspective, no, you shouldn’t take on someone else’s debt,” Kristy remembers her saying. But Kristy felt gratitude to the investor who had backed the restaurant and recalls playing devil’s advocate when talking with Sara’s mom. “She was, like, well, it sounds like you’re going to own a restaurant, and I was, like, I know! But I don’t want to own a restaurant!” Kristy exclaims.
Missy’s story
“I felt like we were standing on the edge of a cliff, and I was, like, this would be a lot less scary if I could hold your hand.” —Missy Barron
“The irony is that Missy’s the one who has massive amounts of restaurant management experience,” Kristy says. While in college, Missy was a manager at Pappasito’s in Humble and later, a manager and event coordinator at The Republic Steakhouse in College Station. Shortly after Kristy opened The Village, Missy switched careers to a high-powered job in management with Cellular Sales. “It just wasn’t time for Missy and [me] to do this together,” Kristy says.
In 2012, Missy was ready for a change of scenery and made a job transfer to Virginia to be with her boyfriend, although the relationship ended shortly thereafter. In 2017, at age 41, she was unexpectedly gifted with a son. Working on 100% sales commission while being a single mom was difficult, so Missy’s mom encouraged her to move back to Texas, live with her, and be a stay-at-home mom. Once a year was up, Missy planned on moving back to Virginia. “I actually had a job back in Richmond, but then the pandemic hit,” Missy says. “It all went away, and so it was like, well, what am I going to do?” Kristy hired her to write her training manuals and came up with another idea: purchase The Frame Gallery, whose owner was retiring, in downtown Bryan.
In addition to providing framing services and showcasing local artists, The Frame Gallery has always been known as a welcoming place since it opened in downtown Bryan 20 years earlier. “[Owner] Greta Watkins is the person who created the first First Friday within The Frame Gallery,” Kristy explains, referring to the open-air festivities and extended shop hours that draw crowds to downtown Bryan on the first Friday of every month. Kristy collaborated with Greta many times to organize art-related events. “I knew that Greta wanted The Frame Gallery to continue. It was just a labor of love for her,” Kristy says. And Kristy believed that Missy had all the right stuff to run it.
“You’re part of the reason The Village has the heart that it has, because that was what we talked about all those years ago,” Kristy told Missy. “I know you can do the same thing with The Frame Gallery.”
While Missy didn’t know anything about framing art, Kristy saw an opportunity.
“I've watched her do so many things and I know what she's capable of,” Kristy says of Missy. “She always has had such a strong work ethic and such a strong mind for ideas and creativity.” Kristy also related to Missy’s stage in life. “I opened The Village when [my son] was 4 as a single woman in 2008 during a recession, during the greatest depression since the Great Depression,” she says. “Missy opening The Frame Gallery during [the pandemic was] literally the same deal. I was just encouraging her.”
Kristy will get set on an idea and work hard to make that idea come together, Missy explains. “This is the first time in 40 years she ever just went, ‘here's an idea’ and just let it happen,” she says.
Missy always knew she wanted her own business but was sure no one would lend her money for an art gallery and frame shop in the middle of a pandemic. “If I was opening a grocery store or something, they might! Or a toilet paper factory!” she says, laughing. But she went ahead and talked with Greta, who felt that Missy was the right person to carry on The Frame Gallery’s legacy. “It just all came together,” Missy says. “I bought that place at the same age that Greta bought it. So it was a cool passing of the torch.”
She says, “It gave a lot of hope and a future for me and my son.”
As Greta was training Missy in the summer and fall of 2020, they discovered how all of her past jobs had prepared Missy for this. “I was always dipping in and out of some artsy thing,” she says. “I always wanted to build stuff, and I have dreamt of owning my own miter saw — and now I do!” she says, laughing.
Whether she was running a restaurant, writing technical manuals, training sales reps, or framing artwork, Missy says she always made sure to learn every aspect of the job until she understood it thoroughly. “It’s like building the wealth of knowledge. Here's my toolbox, what can I draw from?” she says. Kristy agrees. “Running your own business is not about what your product is. Running a business is about running every aspect of the business,” she says.
Then there’s the challenge of making a living while running your own business. “If I don't want to work for someone else, what is the least I have to pay myself to make sure that I can live?” Kristy says prospective business owners need to consider. “You don't have to work for somebody else. You don't have to pay someone else to raise your kid. You can do it, you know — and that's kind of where my heart is with women — you can take care of yourself, just reframe what it means. Take some of the greed out of it, and take some of the excess out of it, and put back into who you are.”
Sara’s story
“I have to believe in my product to be able to sell it.” —Sara Dever
Growing up, Kristy and Missy were enamored with Sara, who was content to sit on the sidelines and hang out while the other two dragged her around to social events. During middle school, Sara often spent the night at Kristy’s and became like one of the family.
“I never met anyone like Sara before,” Kristy says. “She was just so funny, like, you would want to go somewhere, and she takes a week to pack for a two-day trip. I don't understand that! She’s still like that. She lays out everything on the bed, then she folds it, and then she puts some of it back, and she's, like, I need this necklace. And I'm, like, what are you [doing]? We're just going for two days!” “You don't know what your mood’s going to be!” Sara says, grinning.
“It's this whole thing,” Kristy continues. “Any meal she makes is, like, perfect. The reason mine are so good is because I grew up with Sarah Dever,” Kristy says. “You can't just put pesto in the middle of a piece of bread — it has to go from corner to corner — or the peanut butter and jelly … everything is very—"
“ —particular. I’m particular,” Sara says.
“ —like the items in her shop,” Missy says. “She has an excellent eye. She's really good at finding exactly how to make it perfect and how to find the right thing.”
“Our whole life Sara has been — I wouldn't say trendsetter because she's never trendy, she never looks for trends — she just finds things she loves and has impeccable taste,” Kristy says.
Sara’s decision to open her own shop wasn’t a new idea. “I wanted to do it for ages,” Sara says. “I had the LLC for years before I opened up.” The name of her store combines her family’s last name, Savage, and her last name, Dever — sort of. “People always turn me into a diva, and I don't understand why,” Sara says, wryly.
She owned a downtown Bryan property that she had planned to renovate into a
living space with the shop on the first floor, but instead, she sold the building. So when Missy purchased The Frame Gallery and had rental space available, Sara’s dream became a distinct possibility. Missy approached Sara the same way as Kristy did with her: “I'm going to drop this idea in your lap, and then you decide what you want to do,” Missy said to Sara. “No hard feelings either way. We’ll figure it out and make it work, however you want.”
Sara took a while to decide, debating back and forth for a full month. While Missy waited, she says, “I felt like we were standing on the edge of a cliff,” Missy says. “And I was, like, this would be a lot less scary if I could hold your hand — and visa versa.”
Sara came back to Missy with a yes, but said, “These floors don't work for me. This color doesn't work.” So they put in new hardwood floors and painted the walls a neutral hue in time for their soft opening in September 2020.
One entrance leads to both shops — The Frame Gallery to the right and Savage Diva to the left. Customers are often greeted by the shop dog, Willie Nelson, Sara’s gentle Old English sheepdog/poodle mix and the love of her life, she says. One advantage of opening her own business is being able to keep him with her all day.
Sara calls Savage Diva “an eclectic emporium” and its tagline is: “Everything you never knew you needed.” Her style is largely influenced by her travels and a love of art instilled in her by her mother. “I know they tell you not to pick your products based on what you like, but I can’t not — because I have to believe in my product to be able to sell it,” Sara says. “It’s not just that I like it, but that it has a function and is also fun.”
Sara’s inventory supports other small businesses and artists for whom she feels a strong connection, including artist Sid Dickens from Vancouver, Canada, who designs collectable plaster memory tiles; ceramic mugs designed by Italian tattoo artist Pietro Sedda for Rosenthal; and prints by Denver artist Jennifer Yoswa.
The store is divided into sections that include home décor; candles and candle holders; jewelry and scarves; a “witchy” table with incense and burners, tarot cards, and sage; a bar section with glass decanters and specialty mixers; a men’s body care section; and a salty section with notepads, cards, and magnets that have humorous off-color sayings. “I love cuss words,” Sara admits. “And I’m finding other people do too.” She also concedes to an obsession with bags and says, “I’m one of those people who thinks you can’t have enough.”
Prior to moving to Bryan in 2016, Sara lived in Salt Lake City. Her mom passed away a few years earlier, and she was ready to leave her nursing career. Kristy paid her a visit and talked Sara into forgoing her previous 40th birthday travel plans to visit Bryan instead. Suddenly, it was decided: “Kristy somehow talks me into moving here,” Sara recalls. Kristy’s parents immediately flew to Utah. “[They] packed me up and moved me in about a week,” Sara remembers. “I wouldn't be here if that hadn't happened.”
Now she says she’s living her dream. “I do still have that wandering soul, but I’m also very much of a homebody,” she says. “I’ve been moving so much of my life, maybe it was just time to settle.” She reflects. “I’m happy where I’ve landed.”
The Village Downtown and Vino Boheme
“Running your own business is not about what your product is. Running a business is about running every aspect of the business.” —Kristy Petty
It has been more than two decades since Kristy opened The Village Downtown, an eatery by day and event venue by night, that’s now a mainstay in Bryan’s hip, historic retail and restaurant district. The light and airy corner cafe is ideal for viewing the local art that dresses the walls. Customers order coffee drinks, pastries, and desserts at the counter or a bite to eat from the breakfast and lunch menu that features health-conscious fare sourced locally. The Wi-Fi password is visibly displayed on a chalkboard: “localize,” and big painted letters on a wall read “I eat local because I can.”
Kristy has accomplished what she set out to create in Bryan: a place for all the artists to gather, to have events, and get to know each other, she says. “When I did this, it was really about supporting local business.”
The restaurant overcame its biggest hurdle to date when the pandemic threatened its very existence, but thanks to loyal supporters, it survived.
“I was actually petrified that the pandemic was going to put the final nail in the coffin — and I'm still not convinced it's not going to — in small business because it's teaching everybody to do everything online; it’s teaching everybody to stay
home,” Kristy says.
“When convenience supersedes relationships, then we all just turn into these introverts that sit at our home and have toilet paper and food delivered to us,” says Kristy. She has noticed a change since the pandemic in young people who don’t know how to interact with others except through their phones. “They don't know how to pick up real-life nonverbal cues [such as] when someone's face falls because they said something inappropriate.” People make inappropriate comments all the time via the internet, she says, but don’t ever have to see how their words are received and how they can hurt.
“It worries me to not have places like The Village. Yes, you can eat anywhere, you can eat anything, you can make food at home. You still need a place to come and congregate socially where you get one-on-one time with people,” Kristy says.
“I believe in the power of community, of people being able to bring success to the greater good by collaborating, by bringing people together,” she says.
Last year, another opportunity presented itself to Kristy next door to The Village, when Downtown Uncorked wine bar closed (its new location will soon open in South College Station). She opened her own wine bar, Vino Boheme, on Sept. 1, 2021.
Kristy says the name incorporates the culture of wine with “la vie boheme,” which translates from French to English as “the bohemian life,” which refers to the late-19th and early-20th century movement that celebrated the unconventional lifestyle of the artist of all kinds. “As The Village is to local art and culture, I want Vino Boheme to be the way we bring the world’s art and culture to Bryan. “It’s supposed to be a homage to the history of art,” she says, “after ‘Midnight in Paris,’ like a 1920 salon, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein — a place where creatives and people can come together and just actually speak to each other, enjoy each other, and not be on their computers all night or be on their phone,” Kristy says,
Seating areas — arranged like living room spaces with comfy armchairs, couches, and coffee tables — allow for conducive conversation over a glass of wine or beer. Guests can also congregate around tables while noshing on light bites, splitting a charcuterie board, or indulging in dessert. Within a few months, the establishment will secure its liquor license and offer a full complement of alcoholic, as well as non-alcoholic, drink options. “I don't want people to feel like they only have to come here to drink. I want it to be a place where people can just come and enjoy themselves,” Kristy says. “Just a cozy place to be.”
Vino Boheme and The Village Downtown are just around the corner from The Frame Gallery and Savage Diva, and all three women live within a half-mile of each other. Missy and Sara not only spend their days working side by side, but they often share their evenings together or meet up with Kristy for breakfast or after work.
“It's terrifying to own your own business,” Missy says, reflecting on being first-time business owners, and Sara concurs. “Never in my life would I have jumped and done something like this if I did not have the two of them,” Missy says.
“There's something to be said for having strong female friends that are going to encourage you to fly and push you, and clean up your wings whenever you break them, and put Band-Aids—” she points to Sara, “—she puts Band-Aids on me a lot!” Missy says, laughing.
“Missy is really the clumsiest person I've ever known,” Kristy jokes.
“I almost cut the same arm off twice!” Missy says, laughing.
Kristy recalls Missy saying, “You literally talked me into buying a business where I cut huge sheets of glass every day and use saws and blades!’”
“You're like a tiny baby carpenter, ” Kristy teases her.
“We’re all each other’s cheerleaders because we have seen our successes throughout life,” Kristy says. “We’ll always be there for each other, and it’s just so exciting. From a selfish perspective, it's wonderfully convenient for me to have all my girlfriends right here,” she says. “We get to live the rest of our ups and downs together.” She says that having them close by has made a great difference in her life.
“You've read those articles about people building tiny house villages or retiring together [but] instead of building houses around each other, we've just built businesses around each other,” she says.
“Together, we're stronger.” IN
The Village Downtown | 210 W. 26th Street, Bryan
(979) 703-8514 | thevillagedowntown.com
Vino Boheme | 206 W. 26th Street, Bryan
(979) 703-8514 | thevillagedowntown.com/vino-boheme
The Frame Gallery | 108 N. Bryan Avenue, Bryan
(979) 822-0496 | facebook.com/theframegallerydowntown
Savage Diva | 108 N. Bryan Avenue, Bryan
(979) 595-3630 | savagediva.com
