9 minute read
Cover story
BY KHUSHBOO RATHORE
Special to The News-Post
hen Kate Dear was a child, she drove by the Citizens National Bank in downtown Frederick every Sunday. Perched at the corner of South Market and East Patrick streets, it was just a few blocks away from her church.
“I’ve been in love with this building forever,” said Dear, founder and CEO of Fêtewell.
Now, years later, she’s converted the building into a blank canvas that can be transformed into a venue space for any occasion.
When she was looking for buildings for an event space in 2016, the bank was one of the first she explored. At the time, she couldn’t afford it. But in the spring of 2021, while at Disney World with her family, Dear negotiated a price to buy the building and began converting it.
Despite her love for old buildings, it would be a while before Dear realized her passion for transforming them into venue spaces, ultimately creating a successful business, Fêtewell, and going viral on TikTok in the process, with nearly 1 million followers.
Dear, who lives in Howard County, graduated from University of Maryland with a degree in broadcast journalism in 2006. She worked as a producer for WBOC-TV in Salisbury and executive producer for Fox45 Morning News for seven years, but life forced her to reevaluate.
When Dear was pregnant with her first child, she was going to the doctor every week. She already had diabetes, and when her doctor noticed a lump in her neck, a sample was taken for testing.
At 14 weeks pregnant, she was told the results were “suspicious,” and she should get surgery. But the surgery carried a risk of miscarriage, a chance Dear wasn’t willing to take.
A few weeks after her son was born via C-section, doctors diagnosed her with thyroid cancer and removed half of her thyroid, accidentally cutting one of her vocal cords in the process.
Having cancer made her realize that she didn’t love the work she was doing.
“It really makes you reevaluate your life and how you’re spending your time,” she said. “You realize your time is more valuable than anything.”
In early 2014, she left her job and went back to school. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with an MBA in 2016. While there, Dear started to think about the kind of business she wanted to create.
She had worked in the news for years, usually surrounded by people on the worst day of their lives. She decided to go in the opposite direction.
She decided that in her work, she wanted to be surrounded by joy.
She also wanted to find a niche that needed someone like her. Ultimately, she wanted to create change in the venue industry.
“I really saw an opportunity with venues, not only from a policy standpoint but in the wedding industry in general, how there’s a lack of representation for people,” Dear said.
Dear’s vision is always about repurposing old buildings without taking away their character. Case in point, with $10,000, she brought to life the Main Street Ballroom in Ellicott City, a building that used to be a Chevrolet dealership in the 1930s.
“We want this to [keep buildings] as original as possible, just open them up and bring them up to code,” said Fêtewell venue director Rachel Nyanjom.
At the Frederick bank, that meant adding a second staircase and new floor tiles, among other things, but Dear kept the massive safes as a centerpiece. She converted one of them into a bar area and the other into a seating lounge, adding
Staff photos by Bill Green Kate Dear has gone viral on TikTok for transforming old buildings into event venues through her company The Fêtewell Team. She is showman at her latest transformation turning a once downtown bank into a
furniture and shelving.
She leaves some work to the professionals, especially when it comes to heavy materials. But when it came to ripping up the carpet in the building, Dear was on her hands and knees.
That was where she found the original 1908 mosaic tile that would make her go viral on TikTok.
“I started posting about it, and then it went insane. I have a million followers between Instagram and Tik Tok, which is weird,” Dear said.
She started posting on @ thevenueCEO on multiple social media platforms in late 2021. It was February 2022 when she posted the video of her pulling up the carpet at the bank to reveal the beautiful floor tiles covered in carpet glue. The video currently sits at 9.5 million views. For the next couple of months, she documented every step of refurbishing the old tile floor. She also posts about how she started her business and her journey along the way.
As Fêtewell grew, Dear knew she wanted to spread her mission as far as she could.
But she also knew that she couldn’t be everywhere at once. One of the best things about owning her own business is that she is able to be there for every one of her kid’s events. By franchising, she could spread her knowledge and provide other entrepreneurs with support through a process that she has become very familiar with.
When Dear began to explore franchising earlier this year, she put out the application through TikTok. She received more than 5,000 applications.
Among them was Nelson Bolton and his husband, Luis Muñoz, based in Georgia. Bolton had been watching Dear’s videos for about 18 months. Before the pandemic, he and his husband had been thinking about opening an event space.
When Dear posted about her hope to franchise Fêtewell, he applied four times.
“I was kind of scared of how she was, and if we were going to click … but when I met her, it was like love at first sight,” Bolton said.
In less than a day, they were able to communicate without words when looking at venues. Dear was able to give him valuable advice on the possibilities for every venue, and they finally landed on a location in Savannah. Bolton said Dear made him so comfortable and confident, he isn’t scared about the future.
It will be the first franchise of Dear’s business. All of the franchisees pay a fee to take on the Fêtewell name, but beyond that, they are running their own small business.
“They own it, but they’re doing it under a brand that I’ve established, and they’re gonna carry on the same values,” Dear said.
She made sure to heavily vet any people who applied to become franchisees of her company. Dear said no to multiple applications because she knew they weren’t a good fit.
So far, she’s landed on two people: Bolton and Lexi DeJesus, her franchisee in the Western Carolinas.
DeJesus hated her job. She worked in hotels and hospitality and quickly learned that she would never want to do that again. When she saw Dear was looking for franchisees on TikTok, she applied with no expectations. When she heard back, she began to think that Fêtewell’s mission was something she could be a part of. DeJesus worked in real estate during the pandemic, something she really enjoyed.
“I loved it because I was in charge of my own success,” she said. “There was no corporate ladder I had to follow.”
As she got deeper into the franchising process, she worked closely with Dear. The passion that Dear has for her work “radiates,” DeJesus said.
Dear has also been extremely supportive and flexible. DeJesus started the process of franchising in the Carolinas while living in New Orleans. She was also planning her wedding. Dear told her to take all the time she needed. When DeJesus recently moved back to the Carolinas, Dear was there to help her hit the ground running with finding possible venues.
“It’s great having her opinion there to help guide me, but she also doesn’t flush out your creativity,” DeJesus said.
Dear’s business has a foundation of creativity. During the pandemic, Nyanjom became a pastor so Fêtewell could offer elopements for small groups. Dear is the creative vision behind the spaces and the decor. They all reflect a little bit of herself.
Dear also uses her business to make sure the wedding industry reflects the people she loves. Her sister is gay, and her children are half-Indian. She wants them, and others, to see themselves represented throughout the year and not just during Pride Month or Black History Month.
“[Dear] is like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to do a crazy big push, not because we’re not inclusive, but because we don’t want to come off as fake people when we do this year-round,’” Nyanjom said.
Their social media is full of diverse couples, something that Dear insists on. And she makes sure anything related to Fêtewell reflects her values.
Before construction is finished at venues, Dear allows vendors and companies to come in and take photos for free. When she offered this at Citizen’s Ballroom, she noticed everyone brought straight, white models.
“When they’re coming in and I’m offering it for free, it’s reflecting my venue as well … and that doesn’t represent who we are,” Dear said.
So, from March to June, she restricted the free photoshoots to vendors that featured underrepresented groups in their photos.
Her franchisees are also going to carry on the mission of diversity and inclusion at their venues. DeJesus, who is Puerto Rican but doesn’t speak Spanish, is planning to learn the language. She wants to represent Hispanic people in the industry and be able to communicate with clients in Spanish.
“I feel like so little people take the effort to actually learn Spanish, which is sad, so I want to support my Hispanics,” she said.
Franchising has been a big project for Dear. Nyanjom has taken on a lot more responsibility, and Dear is still looking for more franchisees. Her dream is to have a venue in the heart of every downtown area, she said.
And according to Nyanjom and DeJesus, she can do that and anything else she puts her mind to. Cancer gave her a new mindset, one that allowed her to go after the things she wants.
“When things go wrong, none of that matters,” Dear said. “None of it is more important than life, and that’s really what gave me the freedom, mentally, to pursue what I’m doing.”
Khushboo Rathore, a former News-Post intern and current freelancer, is a junior journalism major at the University of Maryland. Follow her on Twitter @kboorath.
