The Menu

The menu got a serious glow-up at the new location. We always knew we wanted to serve hot waffle sundaes, but obviously, we had to call them Mondaes—because... “It’s a Monday”, one of Olan’s most beloved catchphrases from his YouTube classic Ghost in the Stalls.

A Mondae was our love letter to the dessert gods: a freshly baked hot Belgian waffle topped with a scoop of ice cream and just the right avalanche of toppings—warm, cold, crunchy, creamy. Absolute harmony. My personal favorite? The Mr. Maple: a fresh maple waffle smothered in Biscoff cookie butter, stacked with maple walnut blondie ice cream, whipped cream, walnuts, hot fudge, and a drizzle of maple syrup. It was unhinged. In the best way.

And then one day—because we clearly weren’t causing enough chaos—we decided to add milkshakes. But in true Parlor fashion, we couldn’t just call them milkshakes. Thus, the Moonshakes were born.

This was one of those happy accidents I really wish I had planned for during the buildout stage because wow… these things took off. Moonshakes quickly became one of our top-selling items. My personal go-to was the Twenty Stuff—a classic cookies and cream with Oreo, but the real showstopper was the Son of a Reese’s. Visually? Gorgeous. We’d do a full chocolate drip inside the cup and top it with an entire Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup stabbed dramatically onto a cocktail sword. It was art. Delicious, sugar-coma-inducing art.

The Merchandise

One of the most unique (and exhausting) parts of owning and operating The Soda Parlor was that it functioned as equal parts restaurant and retail. I liked to call it a hybrid retail experience—which is a fancy way of saying we were slinging both sundaes and shirts at the same time.

Not only was this a smart business move—diversifying revenue streams and all that—but it also gave me a creative foundation to start building something bigger: a brand. The second, larger version of The Parlor was where I really started to understand just how much fun I could have merging our dessert aesthetic into clothing and accessories.

One of my all-time favorite projects? The Monsters & Floats collection. It all began with a creative collaboration with the artist duo Olivia Frankenstein. I met Mark and Krystal at a local art festival, instantly fell in love with their work, and pitched them the ridiculous (and therefore perfect) idea of a Xenomorph Alien sipping a milkshake with her extra tiny mouth. Hands down, my proudest bit of art direction—years later, it still holds up.

The now-iconic Master Commander mason jar float, which became our anchor symbol. We turned the designs into enamel pins, stickers, and tees—and for a little while, you could walk into the Parlor, grab a Mondae, and walk out with a horror-themed milkshake pin.

And while at the time it all felt like just another fun extension of the Parlor’s universe, I didn’t realize I was unknowingly laying the groundwork for the next chapter. That retail experience—building a brand from scratch, designing merchandise with intention, cultivating a community around products—would quietly prepare me for the future. A future that, come 2018, was about to change everything.

February 24th, 2018 - The Final Space Premiere Party

Another major high was hosting the Final Space premiere party. We teamed up with our brilliant friend Jez DeWolf from the TBS marketing team, who brought in a giant inflatable Mooncake dome for screenings throughout the day. That night, The Soda Parlor turned into a galaxy-brained afterparty, complete with space-themed floats and an art installation that turned our ceiling into a Final Space cold open.

Leading up to it? Easily one of the most stressful weeks of my career. I knew this was a huge opportunity—Hollywood execs would be in attendance—and my OCD was in full force. Naturally, the universe threw everything it had at us. The night before the event, our plumbing completely backed up. To make things worse, we were already having electrical issues (shoutout to our cursed build-out electrician). We’d upgraded to more powerful waffle irons, but guess what—more power = more problems.

So there I was, up until 3AM with my heroic general manager, Violeta, elbow-deep in a grease trap trying to unclog the sewer line. At 6AM I met the plumber, who discovered the cause of the clog: tiny cocktail knives from our milkshake garnishes had been washed down the drain. Meanwhile, an electrician was running yet another line of ugly conduit to get us through the event.

By the time we were watching episodes 1 and 2 inside the Mooncake dome (three showings total), I was desperately trying not to fall asleep. There were photographers capturing people’s reactions and all I could think was: don’t you dare fall asleep during your husband’s TV show premiere. I didn’t...I think....? The weather was weirdly perfect for February. The party was a hit.

And then the sky literally fell. A freak storm rolled in right after the event ended. Despite the chaos (and zero sleep), Olan and I made it to a speakeasy after the event with his agents, the TBS team, and a few Hollywood execs and partied the rest of the night. It was surreal. We had a 4AM flight back to LA the next morning—Olan was set to appear on Conan.

We flew separately. His layover was in Chicago, mine in Houston. The turbulence was so bad, the plane banked hard and dropped out of the sky more than once. I remember thinking, this is probably bad, but I was so exhausted I fell asleep anyway. When I landed, I saw a text from Olan that said, “I love you if my plane doesn’t land.” (His plane did land.) He's not usually that sentimental, which tells you everything you need to know.

He crushed it on Conan the next day. I got to chat with Conan afterward and tell him how much he’s inspired me. It was a full-circle, fever dream moment.

June 19th, 2018 - My villain origin story

By mid-2018, things at The Soda Parlor were running smoothly(well as smoothly as any small business runs). We were coming off our biggest year ever, and I finally felt like I could take a step back from day-to-day operations and (maybe) move to Los Angeles full time instead of living on a red-eye every three weeks.

Meanwhile, Star Cadet—our print shop and fulfillment side of the business—was expanding. With the launch of Final Space licensed merch and a growing client list, Olan and I, along with our business partner at the time, decided to move into a much larger space. We packed up our 2,000 sq ft printshop in East Nashville and moved into a 5,000 sq ft warehouse just up the road in Madison.

And that’s when it happened.

With everything fresh off the moving truck, completely disassembled and non-functional, our then-business partner and best friend of 6 years sent an email announcing that they,  as my lawyer advises I must say: “amicably wanted to part ways.” Very amicable. So amicable I needed therapy to recover from how amicable it all was.

Just like that, the entire Star Cadet operation was dropped into my lap. I had birds eye knowledge of how the everything actually worked. I had already been overseeing all the merchandise at the Parlor and had just release a women's line for Star Cadet.  But my plans to move to L.A. full-time? Canceled. My dreams of a less chaotic life? Also canceled. Instead, I rolled up my sleeves and crash-coursed my way through the world of screen printing, fulfillment logistics, and embroidery machines with a fresh layer of burnout.

Did I plan to run Star Cadet on top of The Soda Parlor?

Absolutely not.

But I did. And I still am.

Is it out of spite? Maybe. But hey—we use whatever fuel we’ve got.  

Hence, why the first fall collection I curated had this gem of a design. 

Art imitates life, life imitates art. 

March 3rd, 2020 - I Hate Tornadoes

I was in Los Angeles, trying to nurse what can only be described as stage-5 burnout. I’d been running both Star Cadet and The Soda Parlor for two years at this point. At the time, we couldn’t seem to keep a general manager staffed—something my friends in the restaurant industry said was par for the course, but it was a new and exhausting problem for us.

On this particular day, I had made plans to spend time with my dear friend Zoja Falzone. Over breakfast, she looked at me and said, “I’m worried about you.” And I remember saying, “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.” The constant back and forth between Nashville and LA, the financial strain, the overwhelming pressure to keep two businesses afloat—while not paying myself—had pushed me to the brink. Olan had just clawed his way to secure a third season of Final Space, and I was quietly imploding.

That night, I went with Zoja to see her husband perform at an open mic. I was seven gin and tonics deep (clearly coping in a healthy way) when my phone started blowing up. Missed calls from my mother-in-law. A text: “A tornado is headed right for you!!”

I called her immediately to let her know I wasn’t in Nashville. Then I called my employee who was house/pet-sitting—he was safe, hiding in the basement with the dogs. All seemed fine... but my gut said otherwise.

In my drunken state, I ordered an Uber to get back to my place and monitor the situation. On the ride home, I pulled up the East Nashville Facebook page—and saw it. The tornado had hit Five Points. I couldn’t get the security cameras in the Parlor to load—the power was out—but someone in the neighborhood responded to my Facebook post asking for eyes on the shop. They sent a photo.

We’d been hit. 

That night became one of the most sobering experiences of my life. The news aired footage of the destruction. The top floor of our building was gone. Every window had been blown out. And I was across the country, helpless.

Olan and I booked the first flight back. I didn’t sleep. I just sat in the airport panicking because we hadn’t made our deposit that day—our assistant manager had been out of town, so it was going to be done that morning. Our weekend cash was still in the safe. We needed that for payroll. 

I kept thinking: I hate my life. 

Everything I had built—everything I had been killing myself to keep running—was just... gone.

And yet... I also felt a weird sense of relief. Because it was gone. But a part of me believed I had somehow caused it. That morning, I had said I couldn’t go on like this. That I wanted out. And then a tornado ripped through East Nashville like it had heard me. It’s one of my more narcissistic thoughts, sure—but grief makes you think wild things.

We landed in Nashville around 11AM. I went straight to the shop and had to fight with police and our landlord to even enter the space. I just wanted to grab the cash from the safe. Thankfully, it was still there. Our neighbors weren’t so lucky—many had been looted.

The damage inside was surreal. Every window shattered. Glass embedded like shrapnel into the pine slab tables I had sanded and finished by hand. Over the next few days, we tried to salvage what we could—but between the shattered glass and water damage, it was a total loss.

At one point, I nearly got arrested just trying to access our own space. The city and our landlord were... less than helpful. They told us we couldn’t remove items through the front door because of overhanging debris—yet somehow had a crane actively helping our upstairs neighbors, a high-end landscape architecture firm, move out with ease. Their solution for us? Use the back door… which was up an entire flight of stairs. It was asinine. So we ignored them.

To make things worse, we were underinsured. In my chronically overextended state, I hadn’t reassessed our liability coverage to match all of our upgrades—so the payout was a joke. We were fortunate enough to have support from the fans with a GoFundMe that helps the sting of the insurance claim. This allowed us to provide severance pay to seasonal employees through the rest of their schedule hours that month and we migrated as many employees as we could and moved them to new roles at Star Cadet but then less than a week later, COVID hit. Our insurance company used the pandemic as an excuse to deny our business interruption claim, arguing that we wouldn’t have been open anyway. So I filed a business interruption claim for COVID. They denied that too—because apparently “global pandemic” wasn’t listed in the fine print.

Needless to say our comeback was going to take a bit more time that we initially thought.