Stephen Montoya
Rollin' n Bowlin' co-founders Sophia Karbowski, and Austin Patry salute the place where it all started, at TCU.
What was once a fledgling health food concept being served out of a food trailer with no air-conditioning has become one of TCU’s latest entrepreneurial success stories.
Even more than a financial success story, the TCU-based Rollin’ n Bowlin’ eatery located on the university’s main campus in the recreation center at the Rickel building, has a sense of student ownership and local pride.
Why, do you ask?
Well, because it was started by two TCU alums, who just wanted a healthy food alternative to choose from instead of all of the unhealthy choices that seem easy when time is of the essence.
Started in 2017, Rollin’ n Bowlin’ is the brainchild of co-founders Sophia Karbowski, and Austin Patry. The idea behind this health food brand is to provide acai bowls with all-natural and healthy ingredients and smoothies to anyone on the go.
“We actually met our senior year in an entrepreneurship class in the Neely School of Business,” Karbowski says as she nostalgically looks at her school from a different point of view.
In fact, Karbowski and Patry have moved on in the business world, only coming back to TCU for one last time to say goodbye to the location that started it all. In 24 hours, their joint endeavor — well, this location — will be taken over by a one-time competitor, thus ending a huge chapter in their personal and business lives.
“The second semester of our senior year, we had the idea to start small with a food truck after talking with several Fort Worth businesses,” she says. “We wanted to see if Fort Worth would even take a shine to our idea first.”
According to Karbowski, she and Patry were approached by Fort Worth businessman Gus Bates Jr., who was opening a gym near TCU. He asked them to bring their food concept to his location.
“We got the money for the food truck from just scrappiness,” Patry says. “I actually had some Bitcoin … which I cashed out, plus we did catering events and set up a crowdfunding page. Plus, the owner of the gym [Bates] cut us a check and asked us that we just give him and his family bowls when they came around.”
In total, Karbowski and Patry were able to come up with $12,000 to buy the food trailer that would eventually launch their business.
“It wasn’t the most user-friendly trailer,” Patry opined. “It had a wall in the center of it because it had been a barbecue business before we had it. We would actually have to walk around the trailer to blend the ingredients on the other side to serve customers. We got to the point where we had a runner get the stuff we needed from the other side and run it back to us.”
With the food trailer retrofitted to meet their needs, to an extent, both Karbowski and Patry began catering large events to get the word out about their health-conscious food.
“Every time we would set up to cater here at TCU, the line would be around the block,” Karbowski said. “There were already three food trucks here, but everyone would be waiting for us and we hadn’t even parked yet.”
There was so much buzz around the health-conscious duo’s products that it caught the attention of some of TCU’s administration.
“Looking back, it seems like it was more calculated than it was, but we were still deciding what food item we wanted to offer,” Patry says.
Eventually, the winner would be the now-famous acai bowls that have become just as much a part of the TCU experience as attending a football game.
The core base of an acai bowl consists of the acai berry that comes typically from the Amazon, which is shipped and packaged as a pure unsweet frozen puree. This puree can be blended with other frozen fruits and vegetables to create a super thick smoothie which is placed in a bowl and topped with things like granola or other natural ingredients. Ingredients, I might add, that are all locally sourced from Texas dairies and businesses.
One year later, after eking out an existence in a poorly adapted food trailer, Rollin’ n Bowlin’ had a chance to open up on the TCU campus.
“TCU talked with us about the struggling food stand in the rec center,” Patry says. “It was kind of a ‘Hail Mary’ for them because we hadn’t really done anything else but the food trailer. But once we did get confirmation from the school that we could open here, we were in for a surprise.”
Patry says TCU gave the duo a green light to open on the campus in the rec center two weeks before the beginning of the fall semester. Compile that with an agreement they both made to cater a large 2,000 bowl event on campus at that same time and you get a John Hughes movie.
“We had to be open on the first day of school,” Karbowski remembers with panic. “We had never opened a restaurant before, so we learned very quickly how to juggle tasks.”
Looking back, both Karbowski and Patry see how fortunate they were that TCU allowed them to use the campus as a real-world business incubator.
“A lot of students come to the faculty here with ‘great ideas’ all the time,” Karbowski says. “So, we are fortunate that they actually let us run with ours.”
Since their start, both Karbowski and Patry have licensed their joint idea and just sold the TCU location to Shake Smart for an undisclosed amount of money. With the sale, Rollin’ n Bowlin’ has six locations nationwide, all on college campuses.
But their partnership seems to be just hitting its stride. This business duo has branched out to sell prepackaged health foods that can be shipped pretty much anywhere in the U.S. An idea that was sparked by the need to keep busy during the height of the global pandemic.
“We actually, unknowingly, entered into this whole other industry during Covid, when all of our stores had to temporarily shut down,” Karbowski says. “We actually packaged all of our smoothies and bowls and it went really well.”
But that’s not all.
This duo is currently in the shelf-stable snack industry with a new brand called Realsy. This organic treat consists of almond or peanut butter stuffed dates that can be found at some health food stores like Sprouts.
“There are a lot of healthy snacks on the shelves, but many of them still have ingredients that we try to avoid,” Karbowski says. “Our snacks are close to like taking a whole piece of fruit on the go. This is what we are focusing on now.”
For more information about Rollin’ n Bolwin’ click here.