Hippo Cafe a resilient spot in Hutto
“There’s a legend that a circus train was passing through Hutto on the train tracks that you can see just outside our window,” said Scott Feller, owner of Hippo Cafe. “The circus stopped to get water for the steam engine and the hippo broke out of his pen and got into the creek. Then they couldn’t get him out. When everyone saw how fiercely the hippo fought, they decided that would be a great mascot.”
After the accident, Hutto took on the hippo as their spirit animal. They put a big hippo statue downtown and changed their high school mascot. So when renaming Hit the Spot Cafe, Mr. Feller and his wife Stacie found Hippo Cafe to be a fitting name.
Hippo Cafe is on 109 East Frontage Street, where Hit the Spot abruptly closed in 2019, putting 35 people out of work — including Scott and Stacie Feller’s teenage daughter, Hanna.
“The previous owner didn’t tell anyone he was closing the doors,” Mr. Feller said. “Everyone just showed up to work one morning and all the locks had been changed.”
His daughter Hanna was heartbroken over losing her first job and asked her parents to buy the restaurant.
Although the Fellers hadn’t ever been in the restaurant industry, they had experience running businesses. The Fellers own KangaRoof and Koala Cooling & Plumbing.
At first, Mr. Feller was hesitant to buy Hit the Spot. However, after considering all the factors and learning how many people lost their jobs, he caved. The Fellers reopened the restaurant in February 2019 under the resilient name, Hippo Cafe. Since opening, the cafe has faced more business competition than they expected.
“Hutto has opened like 35 new restaurants in the last two years. It’s crazy,” Mr. Feller said. “The number of food choices went from like three in town to like 40 in the last two years. That’s been hard on local businesses. We have weathered the storm due to great management by Brian.”
Brian Leszcynski has spearheaded updating the menu and redecorating the restaurant. Mr. Leszcynski’s friend, Ben Stock, painted murals all over the cafe walls, including portraits of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Selena and Willie Nelson. In the company of music icons, customers can enjoy comfort foods like “Heavenly French Toast,” chicken fried steak, or the catfish plate. On Wednesdays there is a liver and onions lunch special.
“People ask me what type of food we serve,” Mr. Feller said. “I say, ‘Make ya happy, make ya fat.’ That’s what we’re trying to do. We want people to come in and have a great experience in their mouth — even if they feel a little bit guilty afterwards.”
Besides the ice cream, Scott’s favorite thing is the smothered omelet, which is a beef tip-stuffed egg omelet topped with queso. There are also “Blackland Truffles” on the menu.
“We’ve essentially turned a loaded mash potato into finger food,” Mr. Feller explained. “The story is that when the hippo was in the creek the reason they had such a hard time finding him was because he had found a trove of Blackland truffles.”
Hippo Cafe does go through spurts of slow business on the weekdays. To make up for it, the cafe has become a virtual restaurant for GrubHub orders. Hippo Cafe now makes food from six different restaurants in their kitchen that GrubHub drivers come and pick up.
This gives people in Hutto, who are ordering food off the GrubHub app, access to food from restaurants that don’t have a physical location in Hutto. It also enables Hippo Cafe to employ workers that might otherwise not have a job.
“We run way more revenue through this [restaurant] than it looks like,” Mr. Feller said. “During the week, the dining room is usually pretty skinny. There’s not a tremendous amount of people here. If you were in the restaurant industry, you might look around and say, ‘This place isn’t making it,’ but what you don’t see is all the stuff the virtual restaurant is getting out on the back end. The margins aren’t really high, but the volume is enormous. It’s kept us in business, frankly.”
Mr. Feller said that he really values taking care of his employees. It serves as a big motivation for him. His longest-standing employees are holdovers from the original restaurant. Gina has been working in the kitchen for seven years, and Lily has been working there for nine years.
Since buying the restaurant, all four of the Fellers’ kids — Hanna, Hailey, Abby and Andrew — have spent time as employees. According to her dad, Hanna has continued to work “like a rock star” at the family’s other business, KangaRoof. In 2021, KangaRoof was ranked No. 1 for small employers by the Austin American-Statesman’s Top Workplaces of Greater Austin project.