Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
Bringing together local businesses and neighbor of the Tri-Cities region. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Skip Mauney helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around The Tri-Cities.
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Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
EP# 144: From Army Cook to Entrepreneur: LJ Boothe's Journey with Axe and Ale House
What makes LJ Boothe with Axe and Ale House a good neighbor?
LJ Boothe, the dynamic owner of the Axe and Ale House, takes center stage in our latest episode as he shares his remarkable journey from being an Army cook to becoming a business owner in Bristol. Discover how LJ transformed a historic building, once the home of the Bristol Herald Courier, into a buzzing venue that fuses the excitement of axe throwing with the warmth of a bar and restaurant. Listen to LJ recount the challenges of marketing his unique venture, harnessing the power of word-of-mouth and online reviews to create unforgettable experiences for his customers. Balancing this thriving business with his family life, LJ also shares his knack for combining his culinary flair with his accounting skills.
In another segment, LJ opens up about a personal triumph that taught him resilience and self-reliance—building his house after his father's unexpected passing. This pivotal experience became the foundation for future projects like the Axe & Ale House. Here, LJ emphasizes the importance of having a dedicated staff and crafting a welcoming atmosphere, highlighting offerings such as electronic axe throwing, comedy nights, and mouth-watering smoked meats. Stay connected through Facebook and the Axe and Ale House website to catch all the exciting events and updates from this extraordinary venue. Tune in to be inspired by LJ's story of entrepreneurship, passion, and community spirit.
To learn more about Axe and Ale House go to:
Axe and Ale House
276-285-2020
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monty.
Speaker 2:Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast of the Tri-Cities. So if you're like me and you love beer and you also love throwing axes around to vent and work off some stress, you're going to be in luck, because today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, mr LJ Booth, who is the owner operator of the Axe and L House. Lj, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Hey, thanks for having me Skip.
Speaker 2:Happy to be here, absolutely Thrilled to have you. Like I said, I have a very special relationship with beer and not necessarily with an axe, but I love chopping wood, I love taking out frustrations with an axe, so I'm pretty excited. I'm sure our listeners are too. So if you don't mind, why don't you kick us off by telling us a little bit about your company?
Speaker 3:mind. Why don't you kick us off by telling us a little bit about your company? Yeah, thanks, Axe L House is an axe throwing venue, bar, restaurant and has a flair for entertainment as well. We kind of pride ourselves in service and providing some high quality food in addition to just axe throwing, and we have a small arcade and a little something for everyone.
Speaker 2:Truly feel like we're probably one of the best places in Bristol to eat, drink and play. Best place to eat, drink and play. I like it Awesome. Well, it's a pretty unique business with the, you know, drinking and throwing axes. So how exactly did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:I knew most of my life that I wanted to own my own business and I had a journey through the army where I went in as a cook in hopes to kind of advance my ability in the kitchen and learn a little bit of a different area in life.
Speaker 3:I actually at the time had an accounting degree from UVA, wise, over here in Wise, virginia, and I utilized my time in the army to kind of learn the craft, had some other opportunities and you know the delays in life that happened sometimes about 15 years later and had a real estate sale that set me in a pretty decent position. But I found out that to actually receive that money the IRS was going to take most of it. So I had an opportunity to put it into a historical building downtown Bristol and one that had been on the market for some years due to, you know, some some roof damage and floor damage and the like and uh, I just kind of saw some beauty in the old bones here and um had some friends buy in with me and we went to work and kind of restored it and changed it from an old office building newspaper building into a axe throwing bar restaurant with a stage and arcade and the whole nine wow, so used to.
Speaker 2:What newspaper was there? Was it the bristol herald courier?
Speaker 3:yes, so, um, the building was built in 1870 and it was actually I get this mixed up, but it was either the bristol herald or the bristol courier and then eventually merged with the herald or the Courier, creating the Bristol Herald Courier, and they were in this building until, I believe, 1969, 1970. I've got the last newspaper ever printed in the building on the wall here. It's pretty neat, very cool. Yeah, it was about 100 years in the building for them and you can definitely tell it was definitely built a couple hundred years ago. It's got some really awesome huge lumber. You know that you just don't see in newer buildings in the modern age, so it's definitely worth just checking out the old bones here, if nothing else.
Speaker 2:Awesome, absolutely Well, I love old architecture and I'm a former newspaper guy too, so that's a couple of my interests, and you have beer. Plenty of beer Makes everything better, makes everything better. So, lj, we know marketing is key to just about any kind of business success. What, what? How do you market the Axanel House?
Speaker 3:You know, that's an incredible challenge so far.
Speaker 3:I'm in a couple other businesses and mostly have just used social media as a way to get the word out, and that's kind of the approach we've taken with Axanel House. Marketing in general often feels like a waste of time. It's hard to see a return. I think brand awareness is important, but the biggest thing for us has been just trying to get word of mouth online reviews, Google reviews. We run a pretty active Facebook page and do events and try to advertise some of our events on things like Eventbrite and things like that. But really for us it's important that you come and you have a good time so that you'll tell your friends. And that's how we feel like building. We can build organically and have long-term success.
Speaker 2:Very good, Very good. Well, as we all know, starting and running a small business is a lot of work. It's very rewarding, but it's a lot of work. Hopefully you leave some time for fun. If so, what do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:Well, the first couple years of the project there wasn't a whole lot of fun to be had. I mostly just escaped for friends' weddings for the minimal amount of time possible. But these days my boys are pretty active in sports, so most of the fun for me is getting to watch them, if, if, I can make that happen. You know, among the day's activities I really like to ski. Um, I've picked that habit up in the last 10 years and I've got some really great friends that we try to meet up once a year and go out West and just take in the mountains and relax for a week, even though we're pushing ourselves probably to the physical limits as we age. But you know, just trying to stay active physically, you know working so many hours can really weigh you down if you're not careful and spend as much time with family as possible.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You ever go to Western North Carolina Beach Mountain.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I got to. I was, fortunate enough we're closed on Tuesdays and the boys were out of school, so I was able to take them a couple weeks ago and we went to Sugar Mountain and then was able to get back there with a buddy just as a warm-up for this trip, coming up to go to Beach as well. So they're both. We're very fortunate to have such awesome mountains really close to us, and you know a lot of people have to drive hours and hours and hours just to get on the slopes and we just have it right in our backyard. That's a blessing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Couldn't agree more Love, sugar and beach. Actually, me too. My daughter just graduated from App State, so she has spent a lot of quality time at both of those places, so let's switch gears. Lj, if you could describe a hardship or a life challenge that you've overcome, either professionally or personally, and how it made you stronger when you came out of it, Sure, I feel like I've had a tough go at the old life situation, so there's kind of a multitude of things I could pull from.
Speaker 3:But you know, I think one of the things that taught me the most as a man was probably like I. I built my house about 10 years ago and my dad was the subject matter expert on the project. Actually, he had built houses his whole life.
Speaker 3:I kind of had been raised by my mom in Northeast Ohio and so I didn't exactly get that experience and unfortunately, about five months into the project he suddenly passed away. So I kind of had to put my big boy pants on and, you know, suck it up and learn of the evening and do the job during the day. And it showed me, you know, at a certain point in life nobody's coming to bail you out. You know you've got to kind of man up if you will, and I did. And I was fortunate fortunate enough to have some friends come in and help me.
Speaker 3:And, you know, ultimately we all just get by with a little help from our friends. And so, you know, it showed me that you can be pushed past your normal limits. If you're willing to hunker down and do what it takes, you can accomplish even building your own house with, you know, ultimately, very little experience. So that kind of was the catalyst for me in life and, you know, even allowed me to take on this huge, beautiful, dilapidated building and see something that other people you know it was on the market for five, maybe 10 years People couldn't see because it was in such bad shape, and not be afraid, because I know, if I just put my head down and plug away, you know you can make things happen in life.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely Well, you finished the house, obviously.
Speaker 3:I did. Yeah, we've been in it. You know there's a couple setbacks, like building inspectors, you know they always come and the whole family's packed up and ready to move and they were like, oh no, you need to put one more rail on the stairwell and stuff like that. But yeah, we got in there. We've lived in there eight, nine years now and you know everything's gone great and it's been nothing but a blessing to our family to have, you know, our own land and our own house and kind of consistency that I maybe didn't have quite in life growing up. So I'm happy to give that to my sons.
Speaker 2:Awesome, and I'm sure your dad's looking down proud that you finished his work for him.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, yeah, it's funny because you know some people you know deal with loss and they, they, they freeze up, they have a hard time. But I just kind of felt like the whole time he'd be haunting me if I didn't get that job done, you know. So it's definitely. He's always there motivating me. I'm, you know, I'm his namesake.
Speaker 2:So it's a lot, means a lot that he was able to help on the project at all and was definitely inspiration for getting it done. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, my dad would be the same way. He would haunt me as well.
Speaker 3:So if you could, think of one thing that you'd like our listeners to remember about Axneville House. What would that be? You know, I think we really truly have a staff that cares. It's something I focused on in the hiring process. We've been through a number of people to get to a staff that cares about them being there. You know there's a common misconception. You know.
Speaker 3:I hear it all the time drinking in Axe's, are you sure? We're a beer wine bar with some ready-to-drink options so we eliminate some of the debauchery. In that regard, we've had probably more than 5,000 people throw in our little time open safely, which is important. We're 10 and up here, so that tends to limit some of the running around. It's not to say we're not kid friendly, but we're a place that was built for adults and then has something for everyone in the arcade and electronic axe throwing and stuff. So really, you know that's all the entertainment stuff, but our food is excellent.
Speaker 3:It's like one of the best kept secrets in Bristol. I've heard that time and time again. We've got some great smoked pork and chicken options. We've got soup. We're doing soups all winter long broccoli and cheese soup and bread bowls and smoked chili and things like that. So you know we've. We want to be a place that you come to when you're looking for something to do in Bristol. You know, throw axes. We have comedy nights, we have open mic nights, trivia every Thursday. But when you're here, we want you to be surprised by how amazing the food is and how great the service is, because there's more than just being a restaurant with Axe and Alehouse. It's a restaurant, it's entertainment, it's great food and we want to be the icing on the cake as our service here.
Speaker 2:Awesome, good thing to remember, for sure. And you made me hungry too, by the way, talking about smoked, oh gosh, yeah.
Speaker 3:That broccoli and cheese soup is. It's my favorite, I'm so addicted to it. Yeah, I could eat it every day.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome. Well, I've got to check that out. Well, for those of us who are very interested in checking out Axanel House and checking out that broccoli cheese soup, how can we learn more?
Speaker 3:Follow us on Facebook. We try to stay pretty consistent with updating everything there, down to our hours. We try to post them daily. Just because you know some people just seeing it. Hopefully we'll give them an opportunity to come in. And then you know, we have a website, wwwaxeandalehousecom. You could give us a call or shoot us an email and we'd be happy to respond to your questions. And, you know, hopefully get your group out here, because we're a pretty great place for groups. I haven't mentioned that, but our dining room fits, you know, 80, and we have it set up for six tops and 12 tops in there. So we we try to make a place for us that would would be a good option for groups and we feel like we've done that.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So you can rent. So if I had a business office with 15, 20 people, you could reserve the restaurant or just a section of the restaurant.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, so it's kind of divided up. Actually it's a unique footprint where it wasn't built as an Axe Lane. We've got Axes on one side, that's with our bar, and then we have a whole kind of separate dining room space that, yeah, you could rent the dining room. We have a little private group that seats up to about 20 group room that you can rent. We've had people rent the whole restaurant. We're pretty open. We realized that there was kind of a shortage of places that are receptive to groups and we wanted to be and feel like we have become, especially with holiday office parties and things like that, birthday parties. We feel like we're definitely becoming a major player in that market because we do have such a great, like I said, our dining room with the stage and has 60 to 80 seats at all times, and then we have another little group room off of that seats another 20. So we've got a pretty, pretty big space here.
Speaker 2:Awesome, awesome, very good to know. Well, jay, I know you're busy, but I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking time out to visit with me and with our listeners, and I wish you and your family and Axanel House and your team there all the best moving forward.
Speaker 3:Hey, thank you so much. Skip, Appreciate it very much.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and maybe we can have you back on the show when you got something big going on.
Speaker 3:Sounds great. We try to keep the big things coming, so we'll definitely holler back at you.
Speaker 2:All right, sounds great. Have a great rest of the day you too. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnptry-citiescom. That's gnptry-citiescom, or call 423-719-5873.