From Dance Floors to Bird Feeders: The Story Behind Backyard Birds

Tucked in what was once a corner gas station in Sugarhouse, Backyard Birds has become a beloved neighborhood fixture — part birding supply store, part gift shop, and entirely unique. For nearly 30 years, Backyard Birds has welcomed everyone from devoted birders and garden enthusiasts to gift buyers and curious passersby.

In this conversation, JB Leonard, store manager, shares how Backyard Birds owners Trace Sweeten and Rob Blackhurst began with a simple retail idea for a wild birding store and grew it into one of the area’s most unique shopping destinations.

Our chat includes bird feeding tips and customer stories as well as surprising ways birds can inspire travel and connection and even bring people together.

JB Leonard, Store Manager, Parker Elton, Asst. Store Manager, Tacey Schuenman, Sales Associate (left to right)

Annie: Hey there. I'm sitting here with JB Leonard, manager of Backyard Birds, one of my favorite shops in town, and I'm super excited to talk to him about all things Backyard Birds. So, hi, JB.

JB: Hi, Annie. Nice to have you.

Annie: Thanks for having me. So, why don't you give us a little background: where you're from, what brought you here, and how long have you been a manager at Backyard Birds.

JB: I am originally from Brigham City in northern Utah. I moved to Salt Lake over 30 years ago to go to school at the U. I studied marketing communications, graduated and then I worked for a while in that field. Then I came to work here at Backyard Birds—sort of fell into it. It's now been 22 years. That kind of says something about how much I like it. It's been a lot of fun. I love the face-to-face interaction with people daily, developing relationships and getting to know customers. I didn't know much about birds when I first started here. When I look back and think about seeing a robin or a sparrow, everything kind of seemed like a robin or a sparrow. Then I found out, no, there are so many different kinds of birds. I've gained an appreciation for birds and peoples’ interests in bird feeding.

Annie: Cool. And did you grow up, like, did your family go hiking? Did you have an interest in kind of nature outside of birds? Did you have any sort of outdoor experience?

JB: No, none. I had an appreciation for it, but not a real interest in it. I can remember first starting here and asking the store manager at the time, "Well, what kind of birds are those outside the store?" I eventually took a class in ornithology from the Cornell Lab, which is something that anyone can do. That was really fascinating about bird biology and bird behavioral habits.

Annie: So are you like a big birder now aside, outside of just Backyard Birds? Do you go out and do birding?

JB: I have before, and it's really fun. The thing that I kind of discovered with that is birds will take you places. There's a birding community out beyond the store. With the new way of social media and communicating and carrying a phone—when I came to work here, we had cell phones, but we didn't have smartphones yet. Now with the smartphones, you've got basically a map that you can take with you. And people are sending out notices through a network so you can go to different sites and see birds for yourself. That's really exciting. Even just here in the Salt Lake Valley, it's taken me places that I would've never gone.

Annie: I met a woman on a plane recently. She was specifically going someplace, or was just coming back from someplace really exotic to see a really specific kind of bird. I don't remember what it was. That was one of the reasons she traveled. She was like, "Oh, I heard there was this kind of bird there and I just gotta go see it." What a cool excuse to travel.

JB: Because you may not be interested in that particular part of the world, but you're gonna go there and see that bird, and then discover, "Oh wow, this is... I had no idea that this was a cool place." We have some customers who do that. They're traveling, they're going out, and they're adding to what they call a life list of birds. That's something I would like to do someday, when I have the time.

Annie: You sent me a really cool information sheet about Backyard Birds as a business, which I'm gonna include on this interview at the end of it so people can read about that. But do you know much about the original owners and their kind of impetus for starting the business? Did they run it for a while? What's the story there?

JB: The owners are Trace Sweeten and Rob Blackhurst. They opened the store in 1998 and were daily involved with it for a long time up until 2019. At that time, both owners stepped back from working in the store full time and turned over the management duties to me.

Annie: And are they all big birders, nature people, or did they kind of stumble into the retail?

JB: They are bird lovers, garden lovers. That's how their interest started. Back in the day, they originally met when they were in their twenties and they opened a dance club here in Salt Lake. They ran that club for many years, but it changed over time. It first started in the late ‘70s. as the The Frisco Bay and was located in the Brickyard area. It was a really great place for the youth population in Salt Lake and the surrounding areas to go for something fun to do on the weekend. The club was successful enough that they later moved to where Barnes & Noble is now on the corner of 21st South and 11th East in Sugarhouse. At the time it was a different building. It was the site of a former department store. The store had closed, and they leased the building, and it became The Bay. They had also opened right next to it a smaller club for 16- to 18-year olds called Hippodrome, which played alternative modern music. My friends and I would drive for an hour from Brigham City to go there. We loved it. I had no idea that I would work for Rob and Trace someday.

In 1990, Trace and Rob moved The Bay out of Sugarhouse to a new location downtown in the historic Eagles building on Fourth South and West Temple. They purchased and renovated the building and turned it into their new Bay club, which ran until 2001. While operating The Bay, Trace and Rob developed an interest in opening a retail shop that would reflect their hobbies of feeding wild birds and gardening. So in 1998, they opened Backyard Birds on 2700 South and Highland Drive in Sugarhouse.

When they moved in here, you may not have noticed, but this was originally a service station. If you look at the outside, you can still see the garage doors. Even in here, the tracks are still up where the doors would open.

Back in the day when the building was a service station and people brought their cars in, there were two oil service bays where the mechanics could get down under the cars and change the oil. One of those is now a pond. Trace and Rob built a deck inside the store that now surrounds the pond and crosses over an indoor stream flowing into it. They brought in a tree that needed to be removed from Trace’s dad’s yard, split it into two trees and hung garden decor from both sets of branches. We get asked all the time if they are live trees.

Annie: I'm embarrassed because I'm not even sure I've noticed that. I think I just probably assumed it was part of the pond decor or something. Which it is, but that's funny. I'll have to look more.

JB: They painted the store. They added a rebar fence outside and a courtyard. We've since expanded that. We didn't have the pergola outside. We added that in 2018 and expanded out, I think, a foot or so on the courtyard. Then we were able to have more of our bird baths, our metal poles for hanging bird feeders and lots of garden art.

Since the store first opened, we've brought on several more mixes of seed. We added popular seed logs and seed cakes, which are an easy way to feed birds for people who are working and traveling. They can just set those out. Birds just feed on them for several days or maybe a week or two.

Annie: Do you think that bird food is your bread and butter here? What's your number one selling thing here?

JB: Our most popular item is the bird seed. Our second most popular item is wind chimes.

Annie: It's such a great wind chime collection.

JB: We just kept bringing in chimes and made space for them. Now they're all through the store. One of our most popular vendors with the chimes is Woodstock Chimes. It's because they offer such a range, from really small to the great big King David Chime and they’re all tuned.

Annie: I love that. What would you say is the most surprising thing about managing the shop?

JB: That's a good question. Most surprising? One of the things is--this could be true for any small business manager--maybe even you. Every day's a little different. You kind of get ready, and you kind of think, "Okay, I got this and this and this, I'm gonna do," and then your day can be a completely different [day] by one or two little things. It can change a lot, which also makes it interesting.

Annie: Along those lines, I would imagine that you have funny customer stories in a shop like this. Just quirky customers.

JB: One thing that commonly occurs almost daily is people who visit the store for the first time will express their amazement at how much merchandise we have inside. We often hear, “There’s so much to see here.”

Annie: I have learned in here that I can keep bird food out year round. I always assumed that when summer's over or fall's over, you should bring them in. Right now, I can't keep my feeders full. They are insane. I literally... they will go through both feeders. I came in here last time and bought a big one, and they will go through that thing in a day and a half. It's insane. I'm like, "No wonder you sell so much. These birds are hungry."

JB: Winter's a really great time to feed birds because it's a way of seeing some birds that you might not see in the summer. We have three different birds, for example, that will descend from the hillsides down into the valley: the juncos, the towhees, the white-crowned sparrows. Especially when the snow falls, they seem to show up around the feeders.

Annie: Should we be switching up the type of food that we put in feeders, or just kind of go with the same thing?

JB: Some people would say yes, but I think you could stay with what works best in your yard. The reason I say that is because some people are real particular about their yards. They don't want any sunflower sprouting up under the feeder or in the flower bed. Maybe the feeder's hanging over flowers. So they've been using our no-waste clean feeding mix or one of our clean bird seed options. I think you can stay with that so that you're not having to do extra work but still attracting a variety of birds.

Annie: I like the sunflowers. The first time it happened, I was like, "Oh." For whatever reason, I just thought that those sunflower seeds wouldn't grow something. And then that summer I had tons of sunflowers in my yard, and I loved it. All right. If you had kind of one final thought, some advice, or maybe some interesting bird-related fact, or kind of a final thing that you'd like to share, what would that be?

JB: Backyard Birds is a unique, enchanting, fun place to walk through and shop. I enjoy seeing people having a great time here. I really do. It's fun to see that this has been a highlight of their day. You can just tell when they are leaving. They're leaving with a smile on their face. That's my goal. So, in and amongst all these big national chains, we are a small store that you can go in to and get personalized,friendly service. It is really the only store of its kind in the country. There are other wild bird stores, but this store is very unique in that we have... you said the word earlier, "curate," and that's very much what we've done is curated a collection of gifts and garden decor and bird feeders, all the essentials for whomever's looking for that, would want.

Annie: I couldn't agree more. I feel like that's in large part why I love the shop. There's always familiar faces. I always feel a little dumb. I don't know what bird food to buy, or what kind of feeder goes with what bird food, or what birds I'm trying to do. There's always somebody helpful to help and talk me through it in terms of the different seeds. It feels really familial and one of the best gift shops in town, for sure. If you are looking, you don't know what to give to somebody, who doesn't love a bird feeder or a chime? All the little trinkets that you have in here are adorable, too. You guys have done a great job with that. Well, thanks, JB. I really appreciate you chatting.

JB: My pleasure!