Community Impact featured 11 businesses in the Leander, Cedar Park and North Austin areas throughout 2022. Revisit these profiles, which ran in our print editions over the course of this year.
January: Leander Nutrition creates personalized healthy smoothies, shakes, energy teas
Leander Nutrition owners Ronnie and Chris Swingler pride themselves as the “Cheers” of nutritional drinks. They learn customers by name and by order—and even by their car as they drive up to Leander Nutrition.
“They’re not customers; they’re family,” Ronnie said. “They’re part of the Leander Nutrition family.”
The Swinglers opened Leander Nutrition in February 2018. Ronnie said after leaving a job in the financial sector and becoming a mom, she wanted to start a business where people can gather, learn about nutrition and have healthy options.
February: Art Beat Dance Center teaches students of all ages and abilities
Brenna Kuhn has former dance students who have become professional dancers and also students who have created success as engineers, doctors and scientists. Dance has taught each of them countless lessons from responsibility to working with others and listening to your body, said Kuhn, the owner of Art Beat Dance Center.
“Your experience in a dance class is going to inform all of those things,” Kuhn said.
Kuhn, who started dancing at age 5, opened the Cedar Park dance school in 2017 after professionally dancing for 25 years, teaching for 20 years and managing other studios for 15 years. Kuhn said she wanted to open her own studio to meet three important aspects: high-quality education. a nurturing environment and a community atmosphere. She said many studios have one or another, but not all three parts of her vision for Art Beat.
March: HD Motorsports: Local shop keeps hobby cars running across Central Texas
When Todd “Therk” Therkildsen opened HD Motorsports, along with Michael Ehrhardt and David Gray, in 2020, he brought with him a lengthy auto industry resume.
Therkildsen has worked on all manner of engines as a NASCAR and drag racing mechanic and did a stint in the Army as a mechanic as well.
“I decided I didn’t want to work for someone else anymore, and I opened up HD Motorsports in the middle of the pandemic,” Therkildsen said. “I started with me and two other mechanics, and now we have 10 full-time employees and one part time.”
HD Motorsports, located at 2118 Downing Lane, Leander, bills itself as offering performance car services and upgrades, but can—and does—do much more for local hobbyists.
May: Blue Water Homecare & Hospice helps Leander residents age in place
About five years ago, Jennifer and Travis Prescott blended their families and started a company.
With Jennifer’s 26 years of experience in nursing and Travis’ Master of Business Administration, the couple launched Blue Water Homecare in 2017 and opened their office in 2020. Now with a workforce of about 130 employees, Jennifer said the Leander-based business has established itself in Williamson County. From her experience working with hospice care patients, Jennifer said she saw an opportunity for home care.
“There was a huge need in the industry to have nonmedical home care,” she said. “There were a lot of agencies out there, but sometimes they didn’t have that skilled approach to nonskilled care.”
June: Action Behavior Centers provides therapy to children with autism in Cedar Park, Leander
Holly and Ryan Lambert originally established Action Behavior Centers because they witnessed firsthand the difficulty families of children with autism spectrum disorder had accessing care.
“[The Lamberts] were friends with a family whose kiddo had ASD, and they saw the process that the family was going through,” Senior Operations Manager Hannah Belota said. “[The family] was having to go through long wait periods; they were having to jump through a lot of hoops; they were trying to get all this insurance.”
The Lamberts founded ABC in 2016 with the mission to provide readily accessible care of the highest quality to kids with ASD. ABC treats children aged 18 months-8 years old using Applied Behavior Analysis therapy with no patient waitlist.
July: Leander-based business Rugh Design offers online paint, design consulting services
Laura Rugh said her passion for colors and design developed when she was growing up.
As a child, she would make color schemes for her room and save her crayons to admire them rather than use them. This love for colors followed Rugh over the course of her career, which eventually led to the establishment of her business, Rugh Design.
“I’ve always felt like I had a passion for color,” Rugh said. “I think because it’s in me, it was a very natural part of just starting the business with the paint colors and kind of coordinating color and things together.”
August: Leander Learning Center encourages children to pursue creative arts
In January, owner and director Mike Irene opened Leander Learning Center, a creative learning environment where young students can freely explore and experiment with art, media arts, music and language.
Irene, who also owns Leander Music School, established the learning center because he felt the need to expand to other areas of creative learning, he said. Leander Learning Center offers lessons on character drawing, anime art, music production and recording on a Digital Audio Workstation, music theory, 3D animation, and Spanish language.
“We’re here to support creative learners,” Irene said.
September: The Breaking Point: Rage room allows participants to ‘unleash inner beast’
Jason Fallwell was waiting at a traffic light in Tucson, Arizona, in 2018, when he saw a business had opened in a vacant building where people could smash things “in a place where it is socially accepted” and not worry about breakage or cleanup.
“I had never seen anything like that,” Fallwell said. “So, I booked it for my anniversary for my wife, [Jaime], and so we went and did it, and it was a good time.”
His two high school-age sons, Evan and Tyler, also loved it. So the family began thinking of setting up a similar business in Austin, a city they thought they could call home.
October: Leander bakery The Sweet Cupfé serves up classic, custom confections to community
Former stay-at-home mom turned self-taught baker Lizzette Allen opened The Sweet Cupfé in Leander on July 12.
Allen began baking while having cravings for sweet treats during pregnancy with her third child nearly 10 years ago. After watching several episodes of “Cupcake Wars,” Allen said she realized there was nothing like that where she lived in Kansas.
“I was like, ‘Well, I’m pregnant; I have these cravings; let me see if I can try and make it,’” she said. “That’s exactly what I did, and that’s exactly how we started.”
November: Ying Yoga Studio offers peaceful framework, principles for clients
Ying Yang said she modeled in China for more than decade, got married and started a family before realizing she was not happy.
She started teaching yoga nonstop at several gyms in Cedar Park and discovered her passion for it, so she got “all her pennies together to start her dream.” In 2016, she opened Ying Yoga Studio.
In June 2021, Yang was hit while riding her motorcycle. She spent more than a year in the hospital and underwent more than 28 surgeries on her left leg. She said yoga helped her recover.
December: Leander shop Drifted Cycles brings bike community together
Brent Skidmore, owner of Drifted Cycles, opened Leander’s first and only bicycle shop in late March.
Previously, Skidmore worked in the oil industry, and his wife, Stephanie, worked as a dental office manager. After getting laid off in 2020 due to the pandemic, the Skidmore family moved to Hawaii.
A few months into their time there, Skidmore and Stephanie realized they needed to focus on working again. Skidmore and his family always enjoyed riding bikes, and he thought if he were to ever open a business, it would be centered around bicycles.
