Our Story
From 2006 to 2007, we were English teachers living on the island of Shikoku in Japan. We lived in one of the most beautiful places imaginable and it was a small village (pictured below) of less than 1,000 people and fell in love with the area, the people, and one of the defining characteristics of Japan - karaoke. We didn’t realize how much we loved karaoke though until we moved to Chicago and found ourselves gathering countless groups of friends to join us at a private room karaoke place on the north side of the city.
That love for karaoke turned into a business plan as we wanted to share our experiences with more and more people and that’s when we developed the plan for Big Box Karaoke. Our first attempt to open Big Box was in Chicago but the recession hit hard and our effort fell short. As the years passed our dream never faded though. We moved back to Northwest Arkansas years later and came across a great location in downtown Fayetteville where we would make our second attempt to bring Big Box to market. It wasn’t meant to be though at that time, but in 2018 it finally happened!
Our dream location opened up in May 2018. As we were walking by late one night during a birthday outing we saw the building. We both looked at it and said this is it. We hadn’t talked about opening Big Box again in quite some time but we knew it. We opened the first Big Box Karaoke location right here in Fayetteville on New Years Eve in 2018. The first 15 months of business were spectacular and we were so excited to have brought on an amazing team and so many customers to come through the doors and share how great their experience was at BBK.
In March 2020 we all started a journey that we never knew would happen. The covid pandemic has without a doubt impacted our business and countless number of small businesses throughout the world. We banded together though and found ways to reinvent ourselves through virtual events, distribution of sake, expansion of our delicious food, and the addition of the BBK Patio (seen above)! As we write this at the end of 2020 we are still here and are continuing to fight on. We wouldn’t be here without our loyal customers that have sat on the patio in the heat, cold, and even the rain. The loyal customers that have ordered countless number of wings, tots, soba, and Banh Mi sandwiches. And of course, the loyal customers who continue to book one of our karaoke boxes to relax and just sing it out. We all need that in this year. Thank you so much for all your support through these 2 years and especially this year. It means the world to us, all of us at BBK.
