The following was written by Anaka Ronan, a finalist for the 2019 SuretyBonds.com Small Business Scholarship, to accompany her video submission.

In my video, I tell the story of my father’s restaurant Sara’s Porkies. It all started in 1999 when my grandparents, two underpaid teachers, started selling pork chop sandwiches for extra cash. Sara’s grew from my grandparents working in a wholesale kitchen to a dine-in pork chop sandwich place that had great food and even greater people. This restaurant had a huge impact on my life from the age of two because my family uprooted their lives to move and help my grandparents with the restaurant. When I was 7 I started helping out and continued to do so until the restaurant closed in 2012. After Sara’s Porkies shut its doors for good, I continued to work for small businesses, most of which were coffee shops. Currently, I’m working at a ski lodge called Showdown Montana. By working for all of these different businesses, I’ve discovered my passion for people. No matter where I worked, it was always easy to see that customers, workers, and owners are the true heart of a small business. I’m going to attend college for business because I want to build a place that attracts people from all walks of life and creates new connections between them.

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