BUSINESS OWNER:  Trevor Wheelock and Jose Santos Campos Gonzalez
BUSINESS NAME:  Sizzle & Syrup
MAIN PRODUCTS/SERVICES:  Quality breakfast food at an affordable cost
LOCATION:  Farmer’s Market

Short description of your business:

Sizzle & Syrup is an up-and-coming breakfast food pop-up business in Sioux City, Iowa. We are focusing on making quality food items such as burritos, pancakes, and daily specials affordable to the public. 

What motivated you to start your business? What drives you each day? 

This all started because we noticed an increased demand for affordable breakfast spots in the Siouxland area. There are not many options without spending half your paycheck.

What’s unique about your business?

We focus more on the quality and price of our food than the quantity of items sold. Santos and I have been in the service industry for a combined total of 20 years. We are adamant about not selling an item that we, ourselves, would not eat. We also focus on making sure that quality food is still affordable. Santos is a single father of four, so going out is hard on the wallet sometimes. We know that is an issue with many other families in the Siouxland area, and we aim to relieve that stress.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome as you’ve grown your business? 

The biggest challenges we faced were the startup costs and the time management needed. We both work two jobs on top of doing Sizzle & Syrup, so managing the time needed to start a business was very difficult for us at the beginning.

What has been your greatest reward? 

Our greatest reward is most definitely the support that we have had from friends and family. It means the world to both of us that the people we love and care for are the people pushing us to do more and get out of our comfort zones. The community of Siouxland is amazing. The support that we have received is unreal. We have people coming every Saturday when we are at the Farmer’s Market, people asking to help all the time, and people just checking in on us every chance they get. It means everything to us.

How have you benefited from the startup community in Sioux City and the region? What resources did you use?

We have not yet used the resources available to us to the fullest. We took our startup very slowly, as we weren’t sure who to contact or what to do. Now, after going through and winning the Siouxland GO’s Innovation Market, we have connected with all the resources we may need. 

Are there any experiences that were particularly influential in that regard?

Winning the Innovation Market definitely helped us more than anything else. It gave us more exposure to the public, access to local resources that we didn’t know we had before, and, of course, the prize money. 

Why is it important for the community to support startups and small businesses? What more can be done to help them?

We think the only thing that truly matters when starting a small business is the support it receives from the community. A business could have the best ideas or food in the world, but if it has nobody to come to support it, then it will always fail. 

What is one thing you know now that you wish you knew when starting your business?

The fact that there were these local resources meant to help people like us. Santos and I knew of a couple to help us get off the ground, but not all of them. Now that we have these new connections, we aim to take full advantage of as many as possible.

What advice would you give to someone looking to start a business?

Ask questions! Santos and I had so many when starting, and it would have been incredibly easier to start everything if we had just reached out and found these local resources sooner. It would have made our transition from startup to a business much faster. 

How can the community continue to help your business?

Keep doing what all of y’all are doing! We can’t describe how important and meaningful each and every one of y’all have been to us. Like I mentioned earlier, the fact that some people want to volunteer as workers to just help us is incredible. When we started this idea of ours, we never could have imagined the amount of support our community has given us.

What are some future goals for your company?

With four months left, we aim to finish strong at this year’s Farmer’s Market. On top of that, we are in the works to have a few brunch pop-ups around Siouxland. Next season we are looking to expand our reach in the community by buying a food truck/trailer. This way we could do more pop-ups around the surrounding area, not only in Sioux City.