“I want to own the first McDonald’s on the moon.” Believe it or not, that was the answer I gave to one of my seventh grade teachers when she asked me what was one of my goals in life. Here we are, 24 years later, and I am finally moving towards that goal. No, do not worry, it is not a McDonalds.  Instead, it is the brainchild of mine, and my brothers, along with a few late night cocktail sessions with good friends and family. It has been a long journey; from starting to talk about it over eight years ago, to deciding to finally put it into action in December of 2007. Did I say 2007? It is hard to believe it has been 3 1/2 years since we started this great adventure, and here I stand writing my first blog about the rollercoaster of our Roll On journey.

In august of this past year I was at a breaking point.  This long-term passion became an obsession.  There were so many stops and starts over the past few years.  “Is this ever going to happen”, I would ask myself.  Was this really something I should be pursuing?  I was miserable, and so was my immediate family, especially my wonderfully supportive wife Sara.  Through September and October of 2010 I began to slowly, but surely, turn my future along with the future of Roll On Sushi Diner into the hands of the Man upstairs. I had done everything I could, and now it was time to trust and have faith that God had me and my families’ best interest in mind; and I mean it when I said turn it over. I even began interviewing for jobs in the tech world after spending a decade spinning my wheels in the financial services arena.

During a two week period just before the Thanksgiving Holiday, about 90% of what needed to happen to bring this dream into reality finally came to fruition.  We found a location and received commitments on all our funding.  It was crazy, and it happened so fast after waiting impatiently for over three years.

What a journey it was. Less than six months ago I was trying to prepare myself for the need to shelf my life-long passion, and turn to selling computer software and hardware over the phone. How disappointing that would have been. Instead we just finished our first food tasting a couple of weeks ago and signed our first location’s lease, we saw Roll On come to life through the drawings of our badass architect, and submitted permits to the city of Austin to start construction in a few weeks.  We are targeting a late June, early July, opening date and could not be more excited. At this point I am perfectly ok not reaching my goal to have a McDonald’s on the moon.  Instead, we are truly blessed with an opportunity to bring something really cool to Austin.  A city that is the epitome of cool, and in my opinion a much cooler place than outer space.

- Chip