The story of Heber City’s new Puerto Rican food truck, Sabor Rico, begins with a Category 5 hurricane. 

Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September 2017. Veronica Barragan was caught in the storm. Barragan evacuated and was holed up in her grandmother’s house as she anxiously waited to see if her home had been destroyed. 

“We were looking from inside the house, and we were seeing houses flying,” Barragan said. “We were like, ‘Our house is not going to make it,’ because it was cement and wood. And after everything was done, we had to go see.”

Barragan and her family walked home through the rubble, unable to use their cars, and found that their house was, thankfully, still intact. A tree had fallen, hit one of the corners of the building and created a water leak. But otherwise, it was in perfect shape.

Still, Hurricane Maria left a devastating impact, making it difficult for Barragan to rebuild her life after the storm.

The hurricane killed over 3,000 people and had a $43 billion economic impact on Puerto Rico. An island-wide electric power outage lasted for 11 months, and there were few jobs, even for Barragan’s father, Juan Muñoz, a welder.

About a month after the hurricane, Barragan and her family decided to move to the mainland. Her mother’s former boss helped the family get jobs at The St. Regis Deer Valley, and they moved to Heber City.

There were many things Barragan missed about Puerto Rico when she moved to Utah, from the beaches to the birdlike chirping of coquí frogs at night.

But what she missed most of all was the food. 

Barragan would drive to Papito Moe’s in West Jordan every weekend for a taste of home because there were no options in the Wasatch Back. Plus, Heber City’s Puerto Rican community is small, she said. After nearly nine years of living there, she’s met about 20 other Puerto Ricans.

Barragan didn’t expect she’d be the trailblazer to bring her island’s food to Wasatch County, despite every member of her family’s love of cooking. Well, everyone except for Muñoz, who much prefers eating the dishes his daughter makes.

Muñoz was ultimately Barragan’s biggest supporter in launching Sabor Rico, which means the “flavor of (Puerto) Rico.” 

Barragan began baking Puerto Rican pastries — like cream cheese-filled quesitos and pastelillos de guayaba, a concoction of powdered sugar, puff pastry and guava — in 2019. 

“I like for people to try them to see what Puerto Rican food tastes like so far away from there, because we are almost on the other coast,” she said.

But Barragan didn’t start selling her desserts until her father suggested it. 

“I had my baby in December 2023. She was in the NICU for almost two months,” Barragan said. “I was, after that, depressed, bored. And he’s like, ‘We should just do something.’”

As she delivered pastries around Utah, Barragan was bombarded with questions about when she would finally open a restaurant or food truck. That question was especially constant at Walmart, where Muñoz would sing his daughter’s praises to coworkers. 

“He’s good at making friends with customers,” Barragan said. “He knows everyone. … Everyone knows him.”

Muñoz bought a food truck for his daughter last October and has been there for her throughout the process, installing a fire suppression system and water heater and driving it around for her. 

“Like we say in Puerto Rico, ‘I’m like a dog with two tails (wagging),'” Muñoz said. “I’m really happy. It’s her dream, and she’s going to succeed.”

Barragan launched Sabor Rico last month.

She serves some pastries and an array of other Puerto Rican delights, including empanadillas, piña coladas and mofongo, green plantains mashed with a mortar and pestle and served with garlic, shrimp or chicarrón, or fried pork belly. 

One of Barragan’s favorite dishes is the pernil plate, pork slow-roasted for four to five hours and served with rice and pigeon peas.

“It’s crunchy on the top, and then super soft inside, juicy,” she described.

Barragan said what sets Puerto Rican food apart is its wide array of flavors and seasonings that add “color.” These range from annatto, a peppery, red condiment coming from the seeds of the achiote tree, and culantro, an herb that tastes like a stronger version of cilantro. 

Barragan’s quest to bring Puerto Rican food to Heber City has already been well-received. 

“Every time we go around with this, people (in other cars) are like, ‘We love Puerto Rican food!’ I’m like, ‘You’re making me think we’re going to crash,’” she said with a laugh.

Barragan plans to drive Sabor Rico around Utah, but Heber City will be her home base. She’ll be at Heber City Hall at 75 N. Main St. from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. every Thursday through Sunday.

The post Sabor Rico brings a taste of Puerto Rico to Heber City appeared first on Park Record.

The invention of carbonated soft serve by two Heber City brothers is shrouded in myth. When asked about it, JC and David Olsen, owners of the recently opened Fizwip, point to their mascot — a four-pronged, winking fluffball. Apparently, the creature is a genie from another planet.

The story goes that one night in 2024, the brothers were visited by the genie. It used its prongs to spin soft serve, infusing carbon dioxide during the freezing process. The result, soda cream, is a “soda-flavored soft serve with a subtle carbonation bite,” JC said.

At Fizwip, the brothers serve their genie juice as three products, called “Fizz-ee,” “Fiz-aa” and “Fiz-oo.” These are best described as a soda, shake and soft serve, respectively. But soda cream’s texture is closer to a creamy ICEE or the ice cream at the bottom of a root beer float than anything you’d find among the frozen desserts at a grocery store. 

The genie story is, of course, just a fun explanation the Olsens use to avoid revealing the secret process behind making soda cream. The real origin story began about two decades ago, when the brothers stumbled across the idea of carbonating frozen yogurt. 

“It was interesting, and it worked, but it was not scalable,” JC said.

The brothers forgot about the idea until three years ago, when they were quitting their “corporate tortures” and were looking for something else to do. They started their messy experiments right away.

“To carbonate anything, you’ve got to put it under pressure,” David said. “We’ve had to clean the ceiling a few times.”

After about four months of experimentation, the Olsens developed a “disgusting” prototype, as JC called it, using off-the-shelf ice cream mix.

“Carbonating a milk product just didn’t taste right,” David said. “So then, the next step was, ‘Let’s go talk to some people who understand the science behind the mix itself and have them work with us on designing a base mix that will accept the carbonation and still feel good in your mouth.’”

The brothers created a lactose-free mix, and thus, soda cream was born. 

“We’re not going for a heavy ice cream,” David said. “It’s a light, refreshing kind of texture to it.”

They then went to work developing flavors: dragonfruit, black cherry cola, blue raspberry, piña colada, root beer, orange cream and many more. They even have some seasonal flavors they’re planning, like ginger beer and eggnog.

The Olsens pitched their idea last summer to the management of Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier in California. Fizwip was such a hit that the brothers decided to take the concept back to their hometown. They moved into the Main Street building that formerly housed the OG Cafe, opening earlier this month. 

“We like this because we can really build the brand. Down there (at Pacific Park), they’re buying our product to resell, but they employ all the people. They do all the operations,” David said.

The space the Olsens have cultivated brings the theme park vibe to Heber City. The walls are vibrantly painted and feature prism windows that transform sunshine into rainbows dancing on the walls. There’s a mirror room that reflects trippy projections of fish and, near the entrance, a QR code customers can scan to print off any photo to add to a photo wall. 

And not all remnants of the OG Cafe have disappeared. Local artist Jacob Fernandez’s mural outside the restaurant, which depicts the cafe’s iconic, sunglasses-clad goats driving a Volkswagen van, now features the Fizwip genie riding in the backseat.

“We decided earlier we want our DNA on this thing. It’s quirky. It’s weird. But we love it because it’s us,” David said about the interior decoration. He would have added a mini golf course and a roller skate rink if he could have pulled it off.

Fizwip also hosts community events ranging from World Cup watch parties to disco nights.

The point of the space, JC said, is to “walk in, feel happy, escape life for 20 minutes.”

That ethos of invoking childhood nostalgia bleeds into the menu, too. Beyond soda cream products, Fizwip also sells walking tacos — a staple of JC’s Boy Scout camping trips — and fries and churros fried in tallow.

The churros come in flavors just as wacky and colorful as the soda cream flavors. There’s even blue raspberry and green apple churros for those accustomed to puckering up. And if your churro isn’t sweet enough, you can order a “Chur-aa” topped with whipped cream and your choice of other toppings, ranging from Pop Rocks to boba.

“One of the things we said is we want everything to be familiar. Churros are familiar. Fries are familiar. Soft serve is familiar. But it’s got to have a little, fun twist that you’ve never thought of before,” JC said.

The Olsens plan on bringing Fizwip to more theme parks. But for now, their focus is bringing their brand of whimsy to their hometown — with the help of their genie business partner.

“We’re living in that world of reality, but we’re always throwing a little twist at it,” David said.

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Wasatch High School junior Vince Witt was all confidence when he won the first-place prize of $10,000 last month at the school’s annual Invest Nest competition — a “Shark Tank”-style tournament in which student business owners pitch their concepts to a panel of judges.

His business, Vince’s Turf and Landscaping, raked in over $230,000 in 2025, profiting $50,000. 

Vince believes xeriscaping — his speciality — is the future of landscaping, given Utah’s desert climate and lack of water to share among developers. He said that puts his company in a strong position to grow.

Vince’s Turf and Landscaping has already booked more than $160,000 worth of jobs this year. Vince expects a gross revenue of $478,000 this year, profiting $105,000. Those impressive numbers proved that landscaping wasn’t merely a summer gig for the 17 year old.

As his uncle, Ben Witt, put it, “If you were to loan one of these kids money, which one would be the most likely to pay it back? If you ask yourself that question, hands down, it would have been Vince. A lot of these kids had good ideas. They had a lot of research. But far and away, he presented himself as the most capable person that’s actually went out and done work and built a business.”

Vince’s confidence waned by the time of the regional finals in Provo on May 4. But as soon as he entered the venue, iHub, his anxiety was replaced with “peace and comfort that (he) was going to do well.”

His hunch was confirmed when the organizers brought an oversized check onstage. The check, Vince said, was somewhat transparent, so he could see his last name on it before it was announced. He was full of excitement. On the check was a sum of $20,000. 

Vince is going to use his winnings to add landscaping maintenance — like lawn mowing and weeding — to his list of services. His hope is to make his business self-sustaining by the time he leaves on a mission trip for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a little over a year. 

That starts with hiring new employees and training them to do landscaping work on their own. Right now, Vince said his 17-year-old cousin, Jack, is the only of his four employees who could handle a job without constant supervision and guidance. 

That’s in no small part because Vince and Jack have been landscaping since they were about 7 years old.

Their work started when Jack’s dad, Ben, purchased a 2-acre tree farm in Heber City in 2016. On weekends, Vince and Jack would help with everything from laying landscape fabric to installing drip irrigation.

Then, about four years ago, Vince’s father, Joe Witt — a prominent homebuilder in Wasatch and Summit counties and who died in an avalanche while snowmobiling in the Snake Creek area in February — allowed Vince and Jack to do the landscaping on a spec home. The boys did such a good job that Joe increasingly recruited them for projects, including a house that appeared in the Park City Showcase of Homes.

Vince’s mother, Terri, said Joe’s trust in Vince demonstrated his ability to believe in people.

“That’s what attracted me most to my husband,” she said. “He saw things in me that I never thought for myself, and then, I started believing them.”

Since Vince was about 10, he had aspirations to buy his own truck, work for his dad and inherit the family business, Terri said. Today, he owns two company trucks for his landscaping business.

Outside of work, Vince loves dirt biking, snowmobiling, boating and camping. 

“I really don’t like being inside,” he explained.

In fact, after seeing the reactions of happy customers, the most fulfilling aspect of landscaping for Vince is how dirty and hands-on it can be.

“I’m literally just covered in dirt right now,” he explained after a five-hour job. “I kind of like going home because I feel like I did something important. I got a job done. And then, when I’m home, it’s relaxing. I can be clean.”

Vince and Jack work from sunrise to sunset most days. 

“We’re right side by side, and we honestly just grind,” Vince said. “You’ve got to be willing to do the stuff no one else wants to do.”

Ben said he’s seen the boys work 15-hour days.

“(They’re) only 17, but (they have) more experience than most people in their 20s do. Tremendous work ethic. … Grit, determination, very smart, very business savvy,” he said.

Ben said Vince’s win represented his reaching the potential Joe saw in him. 

“(Joe) encouraged me to start my own business and was probably my biggest cheerleader, my biggest fan. And I could see that he wanted to put Vince on that same trajectory,” Ben said. “He knew the kid would be a success and told me that he was super excited for Vince to go to Invest Nest. That was the last conversation that I had with my brother. So, to see Vince win that, I felt like it was a fulfillment of Joe’s dream.”

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Melvin’s Public House in downtown Heber City is haunted, and one of its ghosts is a former regular.

“Jack was 94,” recalled owner Melissa Laird. “His friends would bring him in once a week. And he’d sit there with his coat on. He was always cold. And he would have a beer and just talk to everybody.”

Jack still visits bar manager Ginger Mair every once in a while. During one shift, she witnessed a Bud Light inexplicably slide across the bar top, as if Jack were reaching for a cold one with his ethereal hand. There wasn’t any condensation underneath the can to provide a simple, scientific explanation.

“Everybody’s seen something,” Mair said.

It’s no wonder Melvin’s Public House has so many ghosts. The building is over 125 years old and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

That’s why Melvin’s Public House qualified for the state’s Rural Revive & Reside program, which awards grants of up to $50,000 for renovations of historic buildings that bring in business and housing opportunities.

The grant program is funded by the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund. It is administered by Utah Main Street, a network of downtown revitalization organizations across the state, of which Heber City’s Community Alliance for Main Street (CAMS) is a member.

CAMS Executive Director Rachel Kahler guided Laird through the application process, and on Wednesday, Melvin’s Public House received a grant of $50,000. The sports bar will be contributing an extra $12,500 of its own funds for renovations.

The projects include restoration of the floor, windows and front doors through methods including hand sanding, refinishing and sealing, as well as an upgrade to the kitchen hood to improve the interior temperature of the building.

“It’s always too hot or too cold. No one’s ever happy,” Laird said.

Melvin’s Public House will reopen on Monday after a three-week closure to restore the floors.

The building has been Melvin’s Public House since 2018. It opened as Wasatch Saloon after former owner Parley Murdock bought the property from his brother in 1901.

Murdock and other saloon owners in town faced business challenges as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints cracked down on alcohol consumption, which is prohibited per the church’s 1833 health code, the “Word of Wisdom.” 

Heber City leadership took several measures to discourage alcohol consumption, such as raising the price of a liquor license and outright banning the sale of alcoholic beverages in 1909, according to the National Register of Historic Places.

Murdock adapted to the ordinance and the following Prohibition era by transforming the saloon into a pool hall. He reopened a bar in the space following Prohibition, which he continued to operate until 1950.

Willis “Tink” Clyde, a former Park City miner of 17 years, bought the building “to try something different,” according to the National Register of Historic Places. 

Clyde and his family ran Clyde’s Billiards until around the turn of the century. Before Laird opened Melvin’s Public House, the building served as home base for three restaurants: first, bistro The Spicy Lady, then rodeo-themed The Angry Bull, which was run by Flanagan’s Irish Pub co-owner John Kenworthy, and finally Vito’s Italian Ristorante.

Laird saw the for lease sign on the front of the building a few weeks after her 50th birthday and figured running a family-friendly sports bar would be the perfect way to spend her last decade of work before retirement. As a Heber City resident since 2009, she had grown tired of driving her and her husband to Park City every Sunday to find a good place to watch football.

So, the historic building was reimagined eight years ago. Today, the walls of the once-saloon are adorned with flags representing countless football teams. Laird’s regulars brought most of them in. Her team is the Ohio State Buckeyes, and she dances on the bar top every time they win.

The bar top, which was installed when Kenworthy ran The Angry Bull, is one of the building’s features that’s held up best over the years, according to Jose Sotelo, a handyman who has worked on the building multiple times over the past decade.

Operating out of such an old building, Laird walks in every day anticipating that something won’t work. 

When the sports bar opened in 2018, it was always the plumbing, which was later fixed by rerouting the sewer lines. 

Electrical is always “interesting,” Laird said. The sports bar is currently installing a new dishwasher, which has required lots of exploration of the crawl space underneath the building to find the right electric box.

But that’s OK with Laird — she likes buildings with character. 

Part of the appeal of being part of a lineage of businesses operating out of the once-Wasatch Saloon is that customers always come in with stories, whether about eating pickled eggs at Clyde’s Billiards or cleaning the spittoons.

Many of Clyde’s descendants are regulars. Laird said that one of his great-granddaughters wants to hold a seance at Melvin’s Public House “to see who’s hanging out.”

“She’ll probably find her great-grandpa,” Laird said. “Hopefully, she finds my husband. He passed away last year, so we’ve been making fun (of it) because things fall down and lights flicker around a lot now. We just blame Mike for all that.”

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Toys are flying off the shelves at Wigglish Toys & Games in Heber City, but not for the reason the owner, Amy Schultess, hoped. 

After over 13 years of operation, her world of wonder is going out of business.

Schultess joked that maybe she should’ve tried marking down her prices earlier. Ever since she announced the impending closure — and going-out-of-business deals, including 20% off all items — it’s been like the holiday season has come eight months early.

December is Wigglish’s make-it-or-break-it month, bringing in about 80% of annual sales. 

“I often am either extremely late or miss my own Christmas parties,” Schulthess said. “I’m here, being an elf.”

The influx of holiday shoppers typically keeps the store afloat through the upcoming year, she explained, but last Christmas didn’t fare as well as previous years. Then, there was the final nail in the coffin: Schulthess’ landlord announced last month her rent would double in May 2027.

“At the end of each (five-year) lease, it’s doubled, and now, it’s high enough that doubling means we really can’t survive,” Schulthess explained.

Schulthess decided she’d be better off announcing Wigglish’s closure and selling whatever inventory she could before shuttering early.

Whatever doesn’t sell will be donated to local toy drives or taken home. She’s already stocked up for the next five years for gifts for her grandchildren.

“I cry about it every night. It’s been such a labor of love, and I’ve had so many great experiences here, that having it close is almost like a death in the family,” Schulthess said. “I know that sounds extreme, but my own kids grew up here.”

Schulthess was a single mother when she opened Wigglish in 2012. The culture she created with her handful of employees meant that they were really more like friends or family than co-workers. They were always watching each other’s kids, both in and out of the store, which, Schulthess said, allowed her to be involved and present in her own children’s lives.

Schulthess was first inspired to open Wigglish while exploring European toy stores with her children and first husband. 

“The toys were just so fabulous, and so well-curated, and not what you experience here when you go to a big chain store,” she recalled.

When Schulthess eventually moved to Heber City, she realized she wasn’t the only parent who wanted to buy quality, durable toys that were educational and original. 

Thus, Wigglish was born in 2012. Its unofficial motto: “If Walmart has it, we don’t want it.” 

Schulthess thought employee expertise and free gift-wrapping would more than make up for slightly higher prices.

“Reading reviews on Amazon is not the same as me telling someone, ‘I bought this toy 17 years ago for my kids, and now my grandkids are still playing with it,’” she said.

Despite the superior shopping experience Wigglish aimed to offer, big-box stores and online retailers remained one of the toy store’s greatest threats over the past decade. 

“We have a lot of people who will price check and will walk through the store with their phone in hand. I’ll explain to them why a toy is great, and then they immediately, in front of me, buy it online,” Schulthess said. “I can’t even believe the audacity. At least go to the parking lot and buy it.”

Advertising was Wigglish’s Achilles’ heel. Schulthess’ sister, who is a graphic designer, made some digital ads and a website, but Wigglish didn’t have much of an online presence beyond that. Schulthess said she made just three sales through the digital storefront in the past year.

“I didn’t understand how important social media would be in reaching the community members and people who live in Duchesne and Park City and Morgan. It would have made a tremendous difference,” she added.

Wigglish’s location, on the side of U.S. 40 at the southern edge of Heber City, was far from ideal for in-person shoppers. It was a “destination store,” as Schulthess put it, with none of the foot traffic that may have saved Wigglish if it were situated on Main Street. 

Schulthess spent the past five years searching Wasatch County for a new location and even considered purchasing a house to sell toys out of. Every location was pricey or impractical.

“There are really specific things we have to consider, like, is there parking? Is it safe parking for a mom to get out of her van with four children? Is it accessible to everybody who comes? And toys are very big. We’ll have toys that are half the size of my car, big tents or big inflatable toys that we have on display, and that doesn’t work with a small spot,” Schulthess said. “If we wanted to (move), we would have to seriously downsize, and I don’t want to do that, because we would have such a narrow selection that it wouldn’t be Wigglish anymore.”

Schulthess believes Wigglish’s closure will leave a hole in the community.

“I really feel like people are going to miss out on being members of a community instead of just a faceless buyer,” she said. 

Schulthess isn’t sure where she’s going next. She’s been self-employed since she was 20, and anticipated running Wigglish until she retired. 

While closing the store has been a devastating experience for Schulthess, she’s been touched by the number of people who have reached out to tell her Wigglish will be missed.

Schulthess hopes her store is fondly remembered — the same way one of her repeat customers, a woman in her 80s, gets nostalgic about the toy store her father managed downtown, Forsey’s Variety Store, every time she steps into Wigglish.

Sometimes, Schulthess gifts her pink toys — the woman’s favorite color. 

“She gets just as excited as she did, probably, when she was 7. Knowing that I can recreate that for her, even at 80-plus, is something that I have absolutely loved doing,” Schulthess said. “We want people to have good memories of us.”

The post Wigglish Toys & Games is closing after 13 years appeared first on Park Record.

In 2014, Midway resident Joel Clark appeared on “Shark Tank,” seeking investment in his bear-branded pancake mix company, Kodiak Cakes.

None of the sharks offered the investment Clark was hoping for — $500,000 for a 10% of the company — so he walked away. Despite the botched deal, sales skyrocketed from $3.6 million in 2013 to $6.7 million the next year, according to Inc. business magazine.

“When they aired that episode, our website completely crashed,” Clark said. “For two months, we were just trying to keep up.”

These days, Clark is a bit of a shark himself, albeit one with fewer teeth than Kevin O’Leary or Mark Cuban.

On Monday, he was one of four local business owners serving as a judge for Invest Nest, a competition between 10 Wasatch High School students pitching their start-ups in hopes of winning the $10,000 grand prize.

“It’s a cool opportunity to get young people going early on creating businesses, because that’s really how this economy grows,” Clark said. “I have so much respect for entrepreneurship. Creating jobs. Taking risks. It’s really cool. And to start teaching kids skills at an early age like this, it helps them believe that they can do it, because it’s kind of an intimidating thing.”

Invest Nest was started nine years ago by Heber City locals, J.W. Davies and Brad Allen, from the Davies Allen CPA firm, whose children went to Wasatch High School. When they brought the idea of Invest Nest to Weston Broadbent, the school district’s career and technical education director, he was instantly on board. 

Since then, it has become an annual competition that has expanded to 15 other school districts across Utah and Idaho. 

Students compete in three rounds, the first two involving the judges narrowing down contestants through short pitches. 

The third round involves a “Shark Tank” meets “American Idol” competition open to the public. Attendees vote for their top-three winners, who are awarded $10,000, $7,500 and $5,000. The remaining seven contestants walk away with $1,000.

Each school district’s winner will compete in a state competition for $25,000 on May 4 in Provo.

The competition is entirely organized by fellow high school students, who participate to learn leadership and organizational skills and receive scholarship money. This year’s team of student volunteers at the high school will be awarded between $10,000 and $15,000 overall, Davies said. 

“I want to own my own business eventually,” said junior Easton Anderson, one of the organizers. “It’s taught me how to make connections and how to ask people for help, and it’s connected me with all the local business owners. So, I have lots of connections now to hopefully help me in the future.”

Anderson and the rest of the student team have led the charge in securing a venue, finding judges and soliciting sponsors and donations from local businesses. What stuck with Anderson the most was just how clever his competing peers were. 

“I would have never come up with their business ideas,” he said. “Most of them have started from just hobbies that they were doing, and then they said, ‘Well, let’s go sell it to someone.’”

That was certainly true for senior Sarah Cutting, who has transformed her passion for illustrating and painting local flora and fauna with watercolors into a business called Rewild Design Co. 

She sells merchandise for nature lovers, like shirts, stickers, educational posters about birds and bugs, 3D butterfly bookmarks and even a set of playing cards based on a frog’s metamorphosis.

Cutting dove into nature during an eighth-grade ornithology project. She began bird watching in her spare time — a hobby which “got a little intense” — as well as hiking along the Provo River and researching plants and insects. One of her favorite species is the Wasatch penstemon, a tall, berry blue flower native to the Wasatch Mountains.

“So many people don’t know that we have such a huge diversity of species here in Wasatch County and beyond. In the past couple of years, I’ve discovered that. It’s just incredible to me, and I want to share that with others,” she said. 

Cutting started Rewild Design Co. around January 2025. She sells at art markets, through her website and even a wholesale catalogue she launched last fall and distributed to seven retailers, including REI and the Natural History Museum of Utah.

She’s made just over $12,000 since then, taking home over $4,100 after expenses. In 2026, she hopes to bolster her social media presence, increase her presence in retail stores and take home $35,000 in revenue. In five years, she hopes to make $350,000 yearly — donating 1% to local conservation efforts — and have a presence in 100 retail stores across the Mountain West.

Cutting didn’t join Invest Nest until this year because she had to work up the confidence to compete.

“I’m not the most expressive. I don’t consider myself a great and engaging presenter. I’m going to lean into what makes my business and myself unique,” she said before the third round. 

She must have succeeded in showing the audience her perspective on the natural world, though, because she took home the second-place prize of $7,500. 

Taking home the top honor and $10,000 was 17-year-old Vince Witt, who runs Vince’s Turf and Landscape. He does landscaping on homes from start to finish. He’s currently shifting his focus to artificial turf installation in response to Utah’s largely snowless winter. 

“New construction in certain HOAs isn’t allowed to have traditional lawns anymore. The water is too scarce. So you have to have artificial turf or xeriscape landscaping,” he said. “Therefore, I think this trend’s going to move upstate, and everyone’s going to be forced to buy what I offer.”

Vince has been landscaping professionally for four years.

“I’ve been doing this with my dad and my uncle since I was a little kid. And my dad and his seven siblings all did construction of some sort. So, I’ve grown up in it,” he said.

Vince’s father was Joe Witt, a prominent homebuilder in Wasatch and Summit counties who died in an avalanche while snowmobiling in the Snake Creek area in February.

“I worked for him pretty much my whole life. I remember, since I was little, him asking me to run and grab tools from his truck,” Vince said. “Slowly, he started incorporating me more and more. And then, he started letting me do his landscaping on his jobs.”

His dad’s connections have served him well. He’s worked on multimillion-dollar homes, one of which appeared in the Park City Showcase of Homes, and brought home more revenue than any of his Invest Nest competitors.

In 2025, Vince had a gross revenue of just over $230,000, profiting over $50,000. In 2026, he’s already booked almost $160,000 in jobs. He expects gross revenue of $478,000 this year, taking home $105,000.

After adding the $10,000 prize to his bank account, Vince hopes to double his employees from four to eight and participate in a three-month “turf training” internship in Los Angeles through his family’s excavating company.

Vince doesn’t yet have a strategy for the state competition. For now, he’s going to bask in the glory of his win.

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The mindset business owner Myle Walsh takes toward running her Heber City boutique, Water from the Moon, is the same one she had when she got lost on the most active volcano in Indonesia 43 years ago: Dive in headfirst, fly by the seat of your pants and trust the process.

She was on a seven-month backpacking trip through Asia with her then-boyfriend, now-husband, Mark, in 1983 when they decided to climb Mount Merapi.

About three hours into the roughly four-hour climb, Walsh decided she’d had enough and would sit and read a book while Mark, insistent on reaching the summit, completed the climb. They agreed she would start heading back down the volcano at 4 p.m. if Mark hadn’t returned. 

That time came with no sign of Mark. So, Walsh began slowly making her way down.

It had been cloudy on the climb up, but the early sunset made visibility even worse. 

“All of a sudden, I can’t even see my hand in front of my face,” Walsh recalled. “I knew that I shouldn’t keep going because I remember there were a couple of dangerous places that, if it was dark, and I couldn’t see, I maybe could have fallen to my death.”

She called Mark’s name several times to no avail. So, she unpacked her backpack. She didn’t have a flashlight, but she did have a sweatshirt and towel, which she laid out on the trail. Trying to ignore the anxieties in the back of her mind, she stargazed, eventually drifting off to sleep.

When she woke, she made her way down the volcano back to the village where she and Mark had started their journey. She’d spent about an hour sipping tea in a tea house, unsure of what to do, when her boyfriend sauntered in.

“I had held it together pretty well. But when I saw him, I started crying,” Walsh said. 

Mark had made it to the top of Mount Merapi the previous evening and had begun climbing down. He expected to find Walsh on the way down, but she had taken a wrong turn somewhere on the trail.

“When he got to the bottom, I think he was like, ‘Oh, man. This could be over,’” Walsh laughed.

As she had been stargazing on Mount Merapi, Walsh had to keep reminding herself that she had already trekked 300 miles in the Annapurna mountain range in Nepal, a three-week journey with no toilet or shower. If she had made it through that, she could survive a night on a volcano.

That seventh-month backpacking trip through Asia shaped Walsh, who turned 70 on Tuesday, in a way no other experience could have. When she opened her boutique, Water from the Moon, 10 years after her trip, the trials and tribulations of small business ownership seemed like small potatoes. 

Walsh grew up in Newport Beach, California, before moving to Park City when she was 13. Her mother had purchased the Blue Church Lodge inn for $20,000, which still stands today but is no longer owned by Walsh’s family.

Since she was 10, Walsh had worked as a buyer in several surf and ski shops, including those owned by her mother. So, when she stumbled across sweaters, gloves and hats handknit by a Tibetan seller during her backpacking trip, she knew she could resell them to the Park City crowd. 

Sure enough, the apparel sold like hot cakes. Within a year, she’d returned to the Indonesian island of Bali, which she’d fallen in love with on her trip, to buy more souvenirs. 

Walsh estimated that she’s spent about a month in Bali annually for at least the past two decades. 

“Probably the first thing I fell in love with was the people. … They’re super creative. Everyone’s an artist,” she said. “It’s a place that’s connected to culture, art and nature, and that just has always fed my soul.”

After her first visit 43 years ago, Walsh kept going back, accumulating a store’s worth of jewelry and clothing.

“I remember the first couple of times I went, I thought, ‘Oh God, I wonder if I’m ever going to run out of things to buy?’” she said. “The only thing I ever ran out of was money. And then, I’d make a list for the next time. That’s still going on.”

She began hosting “Bali parties” in Utah, California and Colorado to sell the souvenirs she’d accumulated. She describes the parties as pop-ups before pop-ups, transforming friends’ homes into mini-versions of her future boutique, Water from the Moon.

Walsh’s first permanent location was a small space in the Avon Theater available to rent for $300 per month, which she began doing in 1993.

“I was kind of thinking, ‘Well, you know, if it doesn’t work, it won’t break the bank.’ But then, within a year, I’d bought this,” she said, gesturing to the building that now serves as Water from the Moon’s current base of operations. 

The historic home is one of the oldest in Heber City. It was originally a log cabin built by Scottish-American shepherd and Latter-day Saint settler and polygamist John Murray Murdoch. Some of the original logs can still be seen behind a glass display installed on the wall of the building.

The home has since been expanded from the original log cabin and become very colorfully decorated thanks to Walsh’s influence. 

“All these millennials, they want everything gray,” she said. “It’s like taking all the color out of your life. It’s kind of sad to me. I want to be happy with life.”

Like that of any great boutique, Water from the Moon’s stock is truly a hodge-podge of products: books, coffee mugs, cutlery, books, soaps, jewelry and lots of clothes. The only common denominators are floral patterns and popping colors. It’s truly a reflection of Walsh’s taste.

“I have a lot of people come in and say, ‘Oh my God, are you the buyer? I love everything in here,’” she said. “I like things that are fun and colorful and happy, not gimmicky, not ‘I’m not going to like this next year.’”

Unlike the Bali parties of yore, Water from the Moon now sells mostly domestic products, with some products from Bali, particularly sterling silver jewelry, thrown in.

Walsh still visits Bali every year, along with Morocco and Oaxaca, Mexico, as a travel guide, which she has been doing for 23 years. Now, the focus of her Bali trips is more so keeping up the energy than gathering products for her shop. 

“In doing this, I have learned so much about myself, about people, about boundaries, about how to bring people together, and a lot of it is communication and enthusiasm and just saying, ‘This is what we’re doing. Come on, let’s do it,’” Walsh said.

Her energy must be effective, because she’s almost always booked months in advance. She doesn’t feel the need to have a website, relying on word of mouth and repeat customers to fill each trip’s roster of eight to 12 people. She travels with about 50 to 60 people annually.

“And a lot of times, people go on a trip with me, and then, right away, they’re like, ‘OK, where are we going next year?’ So, one trip kind of leads to another,” she said.

Despite being so well-traveled, Walsh has no intention of moving from her home in Midway or shifting Water from the Moon to another location, despite the fact that Heber City hasn’t been the easiest market. 

“It’s been a challenge. The only consistent thing about Heber is how inconsistent it is. And I’ve done everything to make it. Everything. Events, home parties. I haven’t just had the store,” she said.

While Water from the Moon does well with tourists, Myle hopes to see local shoppers more often.

“Once they come, they love it,” she said. “I’ve had this store for 33 years. They’ll walk in and go, ‘Oh, my God, this is so cute. I had no idea.’ I go, ‘Oh, do you live down the street?’ (They’ll say), ‘Yeah, I’ve been driving by here for 12 years.’”

The post Water from the Moon boutique succeeds thanks to a globetrotter’s grit appeared first on Park Record.

The Pizza Yard was plastered with signs modifying its slogan to “We’re all friends here (except ICE).”

The Midway eatery was one of a handful of Wasatch County businesses to participate in Friday’s nationwide economic boycott protesting ICE policies and tactics that resulted in the recent fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

For Pizza Yard owner Matt Reschke, participating in the protest was a no-brainer. His best friends in the pizza industry, Natalie and Ben Taylor, live in Minneapolis and are equally exhausted, overwhelmed and inspired by the ICE demonstrations in the city.

But how could Reschke participate in the boycott’s demands of no work, no school and no spending as a small-business owner? 

Instead of closing up shop for the day, Reschke donated 100% of his proceeds on Friday to the Utah Immigrant Advocacy Coalition and the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota for a total of $4,000.

Another reason Reschke decided to stay open was to start a dialogue.

Elizabeth Budge, a 20-year-old employee, wore a shirt reading “I Stand With Immigrants” that she’d purchased during a protest at the Utah State Capitol over a year ago. She said conversations she’d had with customers were largely positive, with some admitting that they voted for President Trump in the 2024 presidential election but agreed ICE had gone “too far” under his administration.

“The political polarization that we’re seeing right now, I think, is in large part due to differences in information,” Budge said. “We have the algorithmic internet, … but something I’ve been seeing in my own family, in this community, is what’s happening in Minneapolis is hard to ignore, and so people who have been streamlined into these specific political avenues are coming together on this one issue. And that’s one of those things that’s making me feel hopeful.”

Personal tragedy drives Budge’s activism. Her uncle was an undocumented immigrant from Peru who met his wife in Southern California. He was later deported and died by suicide not long after. Budge said her uncle’s separation from his wife and child, on top of underlying mental health issues, contributed to his decision to end his life.

“The whole system is not designed around human need. There’s very little compassion,” Budge said.

Budge is a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said what she hopes to see in a largely religious state like Utah is people becoming more Christlike in their views toward immigrants, regardless of legal status.

“I think that Christ would want us to love our neighbor,” Budge said. “And he wants us to love our neighbor even if our neighbor is someone that we’re being told is different than us, or maybe even less than us, depending on the people in power.”

For her boss, Reschke, protesting ICE was not a religious matter but a moral one.

“It’s really easy to just live by trying to do what’s right rather than trying to figure out what makes sense for the bottom line,” he said. “It’s easy to live in a way that your kids will be proud of you.”

A block away, Folklore Bookshop customer Mary Schindler agreed with Reschke’s sentiment. She brought her kids with her to write elected representatives on postcards provided by the store, which also donated 20% of its proceeds, or over $2,200, to Red Balloon Bookshop — a small business in Minnesota hosting a book drive “to distribute books to kids who are currently staying home due to the actions of ICE.”

Schindler’s 11-year-old daughter, Ans, wrote a postcard to U.S. Sen. John Curtis, former U.S. representative for Utah’s 3rd Congressional District, which includes Wasatch County, Park City and most of Summit County. Curtis voted on Thursday to support a six-bill spending package including funding for the Department of Homeland Security. On Friday, the package was passed with a two-week continuing resolution to deliberate Department of Homeland Security funding.

“You need to stand up and do something to get ICE out. I’m 11 and know everything that happens in the United States from the news,” Ans’ postcard read. “If you don’t try, this country will fall.”

She had penciled a frowny face at the bottom.

Some of what Ans knows about current events comes from watching the news and participating in protests with family members. Much comes from conversations with her mother. 

“Your kids need to know the stresses that we’re feeling and also to know that we care about their future. The biggest thing is I don’t want my kids in 10 years to ask, ‘Why didn’t you do anything?’” Schindler said.

Schindler said many of her conversations with her kids revolve around the rise of fascism in Germany leading up to World War II and why people didn’t speak up. 

Folklore co-owner and author Lindsey Leavitt has been thinking about the same thing.

Leavitt’s oma, or grandmother, grew up in Germany during World War II. Much of Leavitt’s writing has grappled with what she perceived to be political inaction by her oma. As an adult, Leavitt came to understand that her oma was but a child who, just after the war, dealt with the death of her mother and had to take care of her five siblings.

Now that Leavitt believes she is seeing similarities in the United States to what she’s learned about the rise of fascism in Germany, she doesn’t want to stay silent.

She hopes that writing elected representatives can make a difference. The bookstore delivered over 35 postcards to the post office over the course of the day.

“There’s an art form to a letter, and there’s an art form to an email,” she said. “Even if they throw it away, you sitting down and writing something and digesting it and processing what you feel and think empowers you.”

The post Wasatch County businesses join nationwide ICE protest appeared first on Park Record.

With the holiday season wrapping up, Wigglish Toys & Gifts has stayed busy in the weeks leading up to it. 

“I can’t believe people don’t shop earlier,” said Amy Schulthess, owner of the Heber City business. “We’ll get people who come in and are just like, ‘Anything for a 4 year old? I don’t care what color it is. I don’t care what the price is. I don’t care what it does. … And please, please, please wrap it, because I’m on my way to their house right now.’”

No matter the challenge, Schulthess and her four employees are up to the task. And yes, Wigglish does wrap for free.

“We kind of feel like we’re solving problems when we sell the right toy to the right person,” Schulthess said. “You can Google a lot of things, but I think when you’re talking to a person one-on-one, you can get a lot more information, like, ‘He doesn’t like things with wheels’ or ‘Everything goes in his mouth.’” 

The store’s name comes from Roald Dahl’s “The BFG,” when the titular big, friendly giant says “Wigglish” rather than “English.”

“I think speaking Wigglish is looking for toys that are off the beaten track,” Schulthess said. “There are so many good toys out there, so why would you carry the bad ones that break easily and keep your child’s attention for four seconds?”

Schulthess said the ZipString — which shoots strings that are kept floating in the air by fans, essentially Spider-Man’s web shooter mixed with the physics play of a yo-yo — is this holiday season’s most popular toy, selling about 12 on Dec. 10. 

Foosbots, spinning players that allow for a foosball match anywhere with a flat surface, and Hands Craft, do-it-yourself kits for anything from a music box to a clock, are other popular choices.

Schulthess loves to look for toys with a STEM application because  “Science is toys.” She’s a toy connoisseur who decorates her home with chess sets, hand-painted dolls and wooden cars. Schulthess also has about “six dozen unopened LEGO boxes.”  

She also asks herself questions about a toy before selling it herself.

“How soon, if I had this at my house, would I want to get rid of it? Would there be too many pieces, and I’m vacuuming them up? Is it flimsy or poorly made? Is the packaging unappealing?” she said.

Schulthess sources toys from trade shows like the North American International Toy Fair and organizations like the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association and The Good Toy Group. Every time she travels, Schulthess looks at toy stores and talks to the owners if possible, which sometimes new finds.

Traveling is what first inspired Schulthess’ interest in toys.  Exploring Europe with family, Schulthess found that toy stores there were much different from the United States.

“There would be only nice toys. If it was a dress-up dress for little girls, it would have real nice material in it. … If it was a tea set, it might be a really cool wooden tea set that had these beautiful designs,” she said. 

These are what Schulthess likes to call “heirloom toys,” toys of quality that can be passed down through generations. 

Upon moving from Paris to California and later Heber City, Schulthess, then a stay-at-home mother, began a side gig selling just about any product on Amazon out of her garage. When the market of Amazon sellers became “saturated,” Schulthess identified toys — which she had plenty of overstock of — as her niche. 

She opened Wigglish on the side of Highway 40 in 2012. Almost all sales come from in-person buyers despite having an online store, according to Schulthess.

Wigglish’s location can be a problem, however, given its distance from downtown. 

“Every single day, someone says, ‘I had no idea you were here, and I’ve lived in Heber 10 years,’” Schulthess said. “We don’t get walking by traffic very often. If they do, they come from the RV park … but that happens twice a year.”

December is Wigglish’s “make it or break it month,” estimating that 80% of annual sales come from holiday shoppers. While Wigglish is doing “really great” compared to last December, Schulthess said the lack of foot traffic makes the rest of the year difficult. 

Schulthess has looked for locations closer to the heart of Heber City but hasn’t found anything comparable in terms of space and size.

“Not only are toys big, but LEGOs come on pallets. Pallets are big and require forklifts. You can barely park a car on Main Street, let alone have a 26-foot shipping container come to you and unload,” she said. 

While Schulthess has tried to raise awareness about Wigglish through the Wasatch County Library, donations to toy drives and even spring and winter store catalogues, she has still faced difficulties in the Heber City market.

“What I’ve learned is that, while it seems that there’s a lot of disposable income here, parents don’t seem to be as interested in buying high-quality toys. … People have to want to buy a nice toy in order to pay for it,” Schulthess said.

But Schulthess doesn’t think Wigglish’s toys are too expensive, estimating an average retail price of $25 to $35. Ultimately, Schulthess’ wish is that more people would “give us a shot,” particularly outside of the holiday season.

“Just come in, look around. Maybe it’s not for you. That’s OK,” she said. “But I think most people can find something that they would want to take home because who doesn’t want to be a kid again?”

The post Wigglish rides holiday high appeared first on Park Record.

A historic home in Heber City is a popular spot for hamburgers and shakes — with flavors like banana cream pie and German chocolate cake — during the summer season, but it can become a problem during the winter.

Armando Quiñones, the owner of Granny’s Drive In, purchased the restaurant in 2018. Its original owners, Allen and Jan Eggleston, were looking to sell the house in 1982, which was originally a mail-order Sears home owned by Allen’s grandmother. But the sad state of the real estate market led them to reinvent it instead. The restaurant has changed ownership five times since the couple sold it in 1998, before Quiñones bought it.

The business owner knows many improvements could be made to the old house; the interior only fits about 30 people and the patio can become inundated with snow. But the last thing he wants to do is change the property itself.

The building is so ancient that rumors of a mischievous spirit, known only as Ivan, persist to this day, though Quiñones hasn’t yet made the ghost’s acquaintance.

“It’s a very charming place for summer,” he said, characterizing the restaurant as comfortable, but very cozy when the interior is packed with customers. “It’s just like coming in and eating in somebody’s house.”

To finance some of the improvements, Quiñones plans to apply for Wasatch County’s portion of the rural county grant program. The $200,000 program is operated by the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, with a total of $90,000 available to Wasatch County businesses next year.

Heber Valley Chamber Executive Director Dallin Koecher explained that the grants enable business owners to reinvest in their enterprise — whether that’s through improving infrastructure, upgrading a point-of-sale system or beautifying a storefront. 

Businesses can apply for 50% of the project cost, up to $5,000. A project estimated to cost more than $2,000 could receive $1,000 in grant funding, while anything more than $10,000 could receive a maximum of $5,000 in funding.

Koecher was considering splitting the $90,000 so grants can be distributed at two points in the year, likely January and July. However, nothing has been finalized yet. 

Quiñones would use the grant funding to install a canopy or pergola on the backside of Granny’s Drive In, which would double the restaurant’s winter capacity. It’s estimated to cost around $15,000 — a far cry from the $2.29 burger customers could order during Granny’s early years.

Applications are not yet open. Koecher recommended business owners brainstorm project ideas and keep an eye on Go Heber Valley’s website, social media and newsletters.

Applications will be reviewed by Wasatch County’s Community Economic Opportunity Advisory Board, made up of County Manager Dustin Grabau, Heber City Manager Matt Brower and Midway City planner Michael Henke. Summit Line Construction’s Human Resources and Organizational Development Director Patrick Whalen, Community Alliance for Main Street Executive Director Rachel Kahler and Department of Workforce Services workforce development specialist Melissa Daymont also serve on the advisory board.

Business owners applying for grants are expected to be in good financial standing, registered within the county and able to fund the full project upfront. Recipients will be compensated after the project’s completion.

Koecher emphasized the program will be competitive. 

“Give us your best project that’s going to help you grow your business, expand your footprint to serve more customers or provide services that will help you be more efficient with your time and energy,” he said.

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