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(From left) The owners of Studio One Twenty, Robin Gahan of interior decorating business Marble Moon Interiors and Beth Dixon of beverage consulting company Salt and Acid
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Studio One Twenty is located at 120 W. Brookland Park Blvd. in the former Ruby Scoops space.
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Studio One Twenty serves as a home base for Gahan and Dixon’s businesses, allowing them to meet with clients and host community events and pop-ups.
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The bar area inside Studio One Twenty allows Dixon to workshop cocktails, host demos and more.
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Seating and office space for Gahan’s Marble Moon Interiors
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A cozy two-top near the front window
Life has a way of putting us around the right people in the right place at the right time. For friends Beth Dixon and Robin Gahan, their paths realigned when each needed it most.
Servers together at Can Can Brasserie in the early 2000s, the women embarked on separate journeys long ago. Dixon remained in the food and beverage industry, establishing herself as a trusted and tenured bartender working for restaurants including Pasture, Perch and L’Opossum and later establishing her own cocktail consultancy. Gahan, who jokes she’s on her third career path, gravitated toward social work and nonprofits and then became an interior decorator.
At the beginning of this year, however, the North Side residents found themselves on a similar mission: securing a space to level up their budding small businesses. Now, the two are joining forces and doubling down on their brands. On April 10, the duo will host the grand opening of Studio One Twenty, an event space and headquarters for Dixon’s Salt and Acid and Gahan’s Marble Moon Interiors, at 120 W. Brookland Park Blvd.
Gahan says of partnering with Dixon, “I thought, ‘What if we could find something where we could both utilize the space together?’”
Dixon, who says she has been lugging around bar tools and mixers in her car for her classes and other events for far too long, was immediately on board. “I needed storage and I needed an office, and I needed a kitchen, and I needed all of these things. I had been looking at commercial real estate for a while, on and off, but it’s just so expensive,” she says.
The pair took over the former Ruby Scoops storefront in January after the ice cream shop moved into a new, larger building at 310 W. Brookland Park Blvd. Sharing risk in hopes of shared reward, their goal is for Studio One Twenty to provide them with a physical space to host prospective clients, private and public events, and pop-ups. They aim to collaborate while working independently, too.
Both entrepreneurs experienced business-related aha moments during the pandemic. After decades of working in restaurants and bars, Dixon turned her side hustle, and her expertise in the field, into a taxable operation.
“I was already teaching classes on the side, I was doing private events, I had people that were asking me for consulting work, so I was like, ‘Let me just do this,’” Dixon says.
In October 2020, the Hanover native launched Salt and Acid, a multifaceted business where she offers beverage-related services. Since then, she has consulted on drink menus at local restaurants including 821 Cafe, ML Steakhouse and Sweet P’s; taught classes at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, The Kitchen Classroom and Mise en Place; hosted staff training sessions; and created signature sips for everything from local fundraisers to birthday parties and weddings.
“It kept growing and growing and growing, and then I realized I was turning down [Salt and Acid] work because I still had shifts.”
Eventually she went all in. “I had no idea what it was going to grow into, I had no idea if I was going to be successful, I just knew that I had to do something different. I was really burnt out in restaurants; I had been grinding for 23 years,” Dixon says. “I really wanted to work for myself. I had learned a lot from all the people I’ve worked for over the years, including David [Shannon], Mike [Ledesma], Jason [Alley] and Michelle [Jones]. They put a lot of trust in me to do stuff for them, and that forced me to learn how to run a business.”
Gahan, a Virginia Commonwealth University graduate, also experienced a gradual route to her calling. Reflecting on motherhood, marriage and her career, she says, “I kind of did some soul searching and then recognized I hadn’t really invested in myself at all."
A few years ago, she enrolled in an interior decorating certificate program through the University of Richmond. The coursework reinforced a long-held natural talent for aesthetics. Gahan recalls rearranging her parents’ living rooms as a kid, and Dixon vouches that her pal has always had an expressive wardrobe.
Gahan says of her creativity, “Anytime I’ve lived somewhere, I was focused a lot on making it have a feel in a space. I just never really identified that that was a specific skill.”
The Virginia-raised decorator’s style blends modern and new with homegrown, DIY and bold vintage. She excels at creating a balance of high and low, matching thrifted finds with high-dollar statement pieces. Studio One Twenty marks her first commercial project. Gahan is also currently designing the St. Jude Dream Home.
Inside Studio One Twenty, the multipurpose space is a mix of design and function, a fun and inviting mashup of the 1960s and ’70s accented by mirrorballs and pops of texture and color. The back bar, built by Dixon and her father, features retro knickknacks, trinkets and gifts she has collected over the years, each adding a dash of distinction.
“Having a place for Robin to have as a showroom and a place to meet clients and then the back area being a great place for me to do all my cocktail stuff, and then having a bar as a staging area, it’s all incredibly exciting,” Dixon says.
Beyond sharing a lease and a space, the women find comfort in their shared work ethic and vision toward community.
“We say this to each other all the time: Just being able to be in this together, even with completely two separate businesses, we’re able to support each other. We’re both very radically transparent with one another, and we know as business owners that things are going to come up, but we feel confident in our friendship and one another.”
The Studio One Twenty grand-opening party will take place April 10 from 4 to 7 p.m., with catering by fellow North Side businesses Nomad Deli & Catering Co. and Michaela’s bakery.
