City Soup celebrates one year with customer appreciation day
EAST LIVERPOOL — With no restaurant experience and only their love of soup and family recipes, sisters Denise Talbot and Becky Burcham took a gamble when they opened their restaurant City Soup one year ago.
City Soup, located in downtown East Liverpool at 500 Walnut St., is a family owned and operated carry out only with Door Dash option restaurant that features a wide variety of homemade soups and sandwiches.
The business celebrated its one-year anniversary on Wednesday.
Talbot and Burcham have been helped with the business by Burcham’s husband Pat, their sister Jennifer Morehead and her husband Jimmy, sister Kathy Diddle and her husband Mike, sister Angel Hedrick and her husband Kelsey, and Burcham’s adult children Jordan Ward and Ryan Rockhold.
Burcham said the business started because her family loves to cook, and they ate a lot of soup growing up. Her mother, the late Corrine Lutton, of East Liverpool, had eight children and over the course of 20 fostered 55 children.
“My mom had a lot of mouths to feed,” Burcham said. “Growing up our main course was soup or macaroni and cheese. We love soup and Denise (Talbot) and I have always made soup.”
According to Burcham, after Talbot, who went to Florida for 15 years, decided she was going to open a soup shop when she returned to East Liverpool and that is when they made the decision to open City Soup.
The business was originally planned to be called Just Soup, but according to Burcham, her daughter Jordan said that with the city having a focus on trying to bring back downtown to name the business City Soup.
Burcham said it was a rough start with the business because they didn’t quite know what they were doing with none of them having any background in the food service industry.
“We decided to give it a go anyways, because we like soup and know our soup is good and we all like to cook,” Burcham said.
All the recipes are family recipes, and the soups are made fresh daily. Talbot goes into the business early in the morning and starts most of the cooking, Burcham said. Some of the soups offered include ham and bean which is popular choice, hot pepper soup, which is their specialty soup, vegetable soup, cream of mushroom soup, chicken pasta, wedding soup, French onion soup and more. The business has eight soups on the menu daily and specials twice a week. They also sell paninis, sloppy joes and chicken salad, both made from a family recipe, sausage hoagies, grilled cheese and ham and cheese. For dessert they sell cheesecake which is the one item purchased for sale and not made by the business.
When asked what it meant to her for the business to reach its first anniversary, Burcham said she did not know that they were going to make it to one year due to summer being really hard for them. They had to apply for a loan through the Community Improvement Corporation which they were awarded in the amount of $5,000 to get them through. She noted they did really good over the winter though.
During the first year they made over $30,000 in sales, which Burcham feels is good since they did not know what they were doing when they started. She noted they are down to a routine and doing well now.
To celebrate one year of business, customers on Wednesday got to spin a prize wheel in which they could win free quarts of soup or a variety of other customer appreciation gifts.
Regular customer Mike Rolya, who stops into the business weekly, said the business “is the greatest shop in East Liverpool” and he keeps coming back for the “quality and wonderful women.”
Burcham said she tells her customers everyday how much they are appreciated, and the business couldn’t have made it without them.
The business is open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4p.m. They are carry out only. Orders can be placed through Door Dash.