![]() ![]() “I tell people I have never felt anything worse than that.” “Having to go through the process of informing the team and then feeling the emotions of what you’ve just done to a group of 15, 20 people that have really rallied behind your leadership and your concept and believed in it,” she said. When COVID hit, they were forced to shut down operations and eventually lay off staff. “We opened and the amount of support we got from the community was incredible, better than our best-case scenario,” she said. “Like a lot of small businesses, you go through your growing pains and you do your best and just try to get better each day,” she said.īut the typical new business growing pains went into overdrive when the pandemic hit.īoth Ramos and her husband come from a finance background, so they had modeled their best- and worst-case scenario for the business. There was, for instance, their first host stand, which was made of an IKEA bookshelf on wheels with a plank of wood screwed on top. Construction began in 2018 and officially opened in July 2019.Īs with most entrepreneurs, they learned a lot along the way. in the fast-growing and entrepreneurial-friendly Near Southside. They moved back to Fort Worth and began working on the plan for Game Theory, settling on a space at 803 S. That was the genesis of Game Theory Restaurant + Bar, which carries the tagline: “Eat. Let’s bring that out of the home, create a space where people can come together with family, friends, and have that good meal, have a great time and build those memories together,’” she said. “We thought, ‘Why not, instead of making that such a holiday thing that happens once, maybe three times a year. ![]() “Since we were both working in Dallas, we knew we would do it and use it as our way of moving back here,” she said. When she met his family at Thanksgiving, they got out board games after the meal. When her husband met her parents, they played a game of UNO. “Our relationship started around food and games,” she said. When they were getting to know each other and their respective families, Ramos recalled that they played a lot of games together. “It needed to have something unique to it,” she said. Her husband is a foodie, but Ramos wasn’t sure they wanted to open just a restaurant. When Ramos graduated from UT, she began work for a large corporation in Dallas, but she and her husband knew they had the entrepreneurial bug. “There is no getting away with anything in school because it was going to get back to my mother one way or the other, but it was a lot of fun,” she said. A third-generation Fort Worthian, she grew up in the Worth Heights neighborhood near Hemphill Street and Bolt Street, where her parents and grandparents had also grown up. Although they had not known each other previously, one of Ramos’ cousins asked her, “What, are you dating this guy that I’ve known since kindergarten?” When she met her future husband, he said the same, then they drilled down to find they were both from Fort Worth. She would introduce herself as being from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Ramos, 31, admits she has enthusiasm to spare and is a natural “joiner.” It’s how she met her husband, Patrick Lai.Īt the University of Texas at Austin business school, Ramos found herself joining clubs and other organizations. ![]() “We bonded that evening over all things civic – all things voter turnout – all things DEI – and not surprisingly – all things ‘Hamilton The Musical,’” said Cliburn, community and public relations director at Kids Who Care Performing Arts. When one of the chairs of Steer Fort Worth’s civic engagement committee moved out of state, then-president Tracy Cliburn asked Erika Ramos if she was interested in joining the board.Ĭliburn wasn’t really surprised when Ramos didn’t hesitate to say yes, despite working at the time to open Game Theory. ![]()
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