After a year in business, 23-year-old Kyndra Farrell has been nominated for two Small BC Business Awards.
Farrell, who lives in Prince George, is the owner of Worth A Shot Mobile Bar, which is Northern B.C’s first and only portable bartending unit.
She has been nominated for Best Youth Entrepreneur and the the BC Premiers Choice Award.
“In 2021, in December, I got engaged and I was looking for things to start planning my wedding and with the bar being one of the most important things for a lot of people, I was trying to find a service in town, but it was really hard to find companies that would come to you,” explains Farrell.
She said she saw a gap in the marketplace and thought this would be a great opportunity. By January 2022, she began converting a trailer to create the moblie bar and then began hosting a number of private events.
“Then in August, I decided I was ready to go public and so we went on social media and in the first three days of getting on Facebook, we had over 20,000 interactions with the site,” said Farrell.
From the launch in August until the middle of October, Farrell had a booking every single weekend.
“It was a really good first season, I was really overwhelmed by how much work we had and how many people were really excited about our service.”
Over the winter she also booked 15 staff Christmas parties and already has a number of weddings lined up for this summer.
Worth A Shot is not just a mobile bar but is also fully equipped to bring the party to any event. Farrell has included a number of rental equipment options that include things like a self-serve bar cart, a cigars and whisky stand, a keg tap stand, a Champagne wall and many drinking game rentals like giant beer pong or golf.
Farrell now employs a team of six including three on-call bartenders but is hoping to hire more in the spring. She also has a number of projects in the works including a pre-mixed mocktail line .
“I was overwhelmingly happy to be nominated. It was a really neat thing to see and have so many people in the community support us,” said Ferrall. “This is our first year operating and then already having nominations for an award like this. It was just really humbling.”
Being nominated in two categories Farrell has the opportunity to take home $20,000 to help her business grow.
For the 20th anniversary of the Small Business B.C. Awards, people from across the province get to vote for their favourite businesses in four different categories and the top five businesses with the most votes at the end of the campaigning period will then be invited down to the coast to pitch in front of a panel of judges to compete for $40,000 in prize money.
Each winner will be awarded with $10,000 in prize money and 1-year of free advisory support from SBBC.
Three of the awards are structured that way including Best Youth Entrepreneur. The fourth award, the Peoples Premiers Choice Award is entirely determined by public vote so the winner instantly gets $10,000 in cash.
Farrell says she has been surrounded by entrepreneurs her whole life and has always seen herself in the same position.
“Being nominated, as I'm only 23, it's just crazy to be considered for something like that at such a young age. I feel really, really happy about it,” said Farrell.
“It would mean the world [to win] honestly, just to have that kind of reassurance that we're kind of doing the right thing and that people support us and agree with us. It's major.”
You can learn more about and vote for Worth A Shot in the Peoples Premier Choice Awards online.
