The Feral Pig- Julie Sill

Flavors of Northwest Arkansas

Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to another edition of the Flavors of Northwest Arkansas podcast. Appreciate you being here.

Today, we catch up with Julie Sill. You know her from owning and operating a few legendary Dickson Street spots from back in the day, Common Grounds and the Hog Haus Brewery in Fayetteville.

She’s back and opening a new spot. More on that in a second.

A few quick things first.

If you’re in need of a free Thanksgiving meal on Thursday, I’ve posted a list of places that are serving them on Instagram and Facebook. Just look for the Flavors of Northwest Arkansas.

Secondly, some very important dates were announced yesterday (Tuesday, November 26th) for any and all beer nerds out there. The good folks at the Ozark Beer Company announced that they’ll be releasing their vaunted BDCS during the last week of the year!

For those that don’t know, that is the Bourbon Double Cream Stout. People come in from out of state for this release. It’s been rated World Class by Beer Advocate, it’s and it’s right here in our own back yard! We’ll get a history lesson on it from Lacie Bray and Marty Shutter of Ozark Beer Company. Hear what you’ll be able to get and when!

By the way, if you want to hear the Ozark Beer podcast, scroll back to April 17th. It has some great stories! Also, head to Ozark Beer Company’s social media to see the message from owners Lacie and Andy about the release.

Now. Back to the Feral Pig... Julie Sill came to the UofA on a soccer scholarship. A knee injury ended her soccer career, and she needed to figure out what to do next. While she was doing that, she waited tables. She worked her way up. She found a correlation between the restaurant business and soccer, and that’s what sucked her in. She’ll tell you what that is.

She worked her way into management and was soon running a restaurant for someone else. It didn’t take long before she had her own restaurant at the age of 21! She’ll tell that story and how she got Common Grounds off the ground.

Later, she’d own and run the Hog Haus Brewery and wait until you hear the sweetheart deal that she got! Health would force her to get out of the business and head home to Maryland, but Fayetteville pulled her back, and now she’s launching a new spot.

Sidenote- there are a few spots in here where adult language is used, so beware!

We’ll hear from Julie Sill, next here on the Flavors of Northwest Arkansas.