Olaf Growald
Jonathan Morris has had a full year — even before COVID-19 socked his Fort Worth Barber Shop. Morris and a partner broke ground in mid-March on their 21-room boutique hotel, Hotel Dryce, on the site of an old dry ice warehouse across from the new Dickies Arena in west Fort Worth. Opening is still scheduled for January. Morris, who grew up in Denton, was working for a marketing agency when he broke onto the Fort Worth entrepreneurial scene in fall 2014, sinking personal savings into the opening of Fort Worth Barber Shop in an old West Side building and offering an old-fashioned-style barbershop with modern touches like the serving of beer, spinning of discs on the record player, and opening the shop’s garage doors to the outdoors in season. Morris in January consolidated his Foundry shop, The Lathery, into Fort Worth Barber Shop and managed as COVID-19 forced a temporary closure and vibe-altering changes as he reopened. Most recently, Morris announced this summer he’ll anchor a TV series on Chip and Joanna Gaines’ new Magnolia Network, debuting early next year as a replacement for the DIY Network. Morris will travel the U.S., interviewing entrepreneurs for the show, being produced by Fort Worth’s Red Sanders (see Entrepreneur of Excellence bio, page 44) and including eight-10 episodes in its launch season. Morris met up with Fort Worth Inc. in August for a quick Q&A.
MANAGING THROUGH COVID-19
Morris was visiting his sister in Argentina in mid-March when COVID hit. “I closed the barbershop. Soon after, the mandate to close occurred. We applied for [a payroll protection program loan] for our front desk team. A lot of our barbers applied for PPP as independent contractors. It was still just tough. We had a little bit of cash, but you can’t spend anything.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced barbershops could reopen May 8, but Morris gave it an extra week. Customers upon entry are directed to wash their hands and queue up in their barber’s “zone.” Wearing of masks is required unless the mask must be removed as part of the service. For now, no more beer, spinning of records, hugs and high-fives, opening of the garage doors, and walk-in traffic. Toughest part early: managing expectations for his staff of 10. Traffic picked up through the summer, even though a lot of loyal customers hadn’t returned yet, Morris says. “Our barbers are staying busy right now.”
DEALING WITH LANDLORD
“My landlord, Shannon Wynne, I reached out to him when I was in Argentina. He’s an entrepreneur as well. He was very, very accommodating. He said, ‘Don’t worry about rent right now; we’ll figure that out down the road.’ [Wynne this summer announced he was closing his Bird Café in downtown Fort Worth’s Sundance Square.] If we would have had a few more months of not being open and I was left holding the rent bag, cash-wise, we might not have made it through the end of 2020.”
HOTEL DRYCE
“In 2018, the old dry ice warehouse came up for sale. I had just had a conversation [after I] ran into an old buddy. I said I’m ready to add to the portfolio of businesses. I said I’d love to add a boutique hotel. My buddy [Allen Mederos] said he’d just gotten back from a boutique hotel in Florida. The next week, he and I got together and started talking. I started looking online [at property]. I noticed Gary Vasseur had a “for sale” sign at the ice building. I inquired. We offered. One of the unique things about the property [is its location]. There’s going to be 14,000 people coming through Dickies Arena for a concert and show. Within the Cultural District, there’s just not very many places to stay in proximity.”
Morris and Mederos won a 9-0 rezoning vote at the Fort Worth City Council and secured financing through CapTex Bank in Fort Worth. Bennett Benner Partners is the architect, and Fort Construction, the general contractor. “They’ve been great partners. We felt we came up with a design that honors the old building, but a large portion of the building is brand-new build. We’ve got a great lobby bar and courtyard. Really lean into the future of Fort Worth: diverse place that is forward-thinking. We honor our past at the same time.”
Rack rates will likely be $165-$170 per night. “As of right now, our timeline is still mid-January. We’d like to be open, in a very ideal world, before the rodeo comes into town. It could very well be one of our larger audiences during the year. We don’t know what the rodeo’s going to look like. We don’t even know whether our bar will be able to be operable.”
Morris says he and Mederos are studying hotels worldwide on how they’re dealing with the pandemic. “We do think business travel will be one of the last key factors in business to return. [But] we’re seeing a lot of staycationing happening. As much as we want to welcome a lot of new people to Fort Worth, I anticipate a lot of people from Fort Worth who want a different space and unique staycation experience.”
TV SHOW
“I will be traveling around Texas talking to entrepreneurs about their successes, their challenges, how they’ve responded to the pandemic. We start shooting that this fall. The network launches in the spring of 2021. Red Sanders reached out to me last summer. Said he was meeting with Magnolia. We started coming up with some ideas. After a year of potential iterations, it very naturally turned into this idea that Jonathan, an entrepreneur, would talk to other entrepreneurs about their experiences. It’s authentic, and that’s what I just really love doing.”