San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Couple living their Hill Country B&B dream
For decades, Diana and Lynn Allen dreamed of starting a bedand-breakfast. Three years ago, they did it.
Throughout their marriage they had visited bed-and-breakfasts across the U.S. and in Europe, making note of what they thought worked and what didn’t. Their B&B, Inn at Sunset Mill Ranch on 25 acres in Wimberly, has an outdoor movie theater and bar, a fire pit and trails under canopies of live oaks and with panoramic views of the surrounding hills. They cook and serve breakfast.
Along with five guest rooms in a cabin and carriage house they built from scratch, the B&B features the recent addition of an Airstream trailer, which they call the Glamper because it offers a “glamping” experience — a term for “glamorous camping.”
“This has kind of been a 40year dream,” Lynn Allen said. “We went to a B&B for our first vacation, fell in love with the place. It was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat to do this at some point?’ And here we are.”
They are still growing their business with a barn that will feature another four bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen under construction. They’ve decorated the property with birdhouses and antiques, including a windmill and a historic carriage. A herd of cows wanders the acreage, usually staying out of the way but sometimes appearing to eat their flowers.
Hailing from Illinois, the couple has lived in Texas for 25 years. Prior to opening their bed-and-breakfast, they worked in the energy business.
“We had some friends that were also from our hometown and they moved to Houston,” Lynn Allen said. “And they told us, ‘You’ve got to go to the Hill Country.’ Our first summer that we came here was in ’98 and we just fell in love with it. Just, there’s no place like this. This is where we want to retire.”
They bought the property 14 years ago and started spending weekends on it. They largely built it during the COVID-19 pandemic.
They recently sat down with the Express-News to discuss what they love about bed-andbreakfasts, where their guests tend to come from and whether their B&B is profitable or a labor of love. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q: What appealed to you about having a B&B?
Diana: Just having the gift of hospitality. We love meeting new people. We’ve stayed in a lot of bed-and-breakfasts over the years, and we just saw the good and some things that they didn’t do quite right. We were like, “OK, let’s do everything that we saw that was good and put our own little twist on it.” We knew we wanted this place to look like it was old, yet we wanted the luxury of the new. That’s why we built from scratch. We tried to make it look like it was an old German house that was built onto many times. The breakfast is really farm-totable and good.
Lynn: Diana’s a natural host. That’s really her sweet spot. She loves to cook — she’s a fabulous cook. She loves to entertain. We’ve always enjoyed family and friends visiting. I think we started just from having a great vacation and enjoying that to realizing this would be a great lifestyle.
Q: What are the good things you picked up from other B&Bs?
Diana: Mainly the hospitality of the innkeepers and the owners. How they would serve breakfast — the ones that really enjoyed it, you could tell. And then you could tell the folks that were just doing it for extra income.
Lynn: You always find that one place that you say, “Gosh, I wish this is where we’d stayed.” That’s what we wanted this to be. Obviously, the facilities; you want to stay in something that’s clean, that’s comfortable. Local information — knowing where to go; what’s your favorite restaurant? A lot of times, the publications have all the tourist stuff — we have that here too, obviously — but where do the locals go? I think it means a lot to people when you take time with them.
We want to make this a relaxing experience. We had a couple here one time that had hit a deer while they were here and had torn up a rental car. So we helped them get back to the airport and take care of things.
Q: Do you do most of the work yourselves?
Lynn: We do. Diana has help with cleaning the rooms but primarily does all the cooking. Diana does the breakfast and I help. But we do the work, maintenance — what we can. It’s kind of a his-and-her operation.
Q: Are there downsides to the lifestyle?
Lynn: Maybe one of the downsides, right now, we’re trying to figure out when we can make a trip home. And, of course, we’ve got bookings that we need to work around. So it does limit flexibility. Before owning this, you could pretty much take a vacation with a heads-up.
Diana: It used to be we would just say, “OK, we’re coming next week.” But now we can’t do that. But people always say, “Why in the world would you do this — this is a lot of work.” To me, it doesn’t really feel like work. Just living the dream.
Q: It’s just fun to meet people, talk with people?
Lynn: Yeah — and we have people from all over the world. A lot of Europeans.
Diana: We’ve had several from Canada. A couple of guys that were traveling from Germany.
Q: The people from Europe — what are they coming here for? Are they making a cross-country trip or coming specifically to Texas?
Lynn: We’ve seen it all. We’ve seen cross-country trips. They like Austin, for sure. And San Antonio.
Diana: A lot of the people from Europe, Germany, they say this is so much like home.
Q: Do the guests expect you to talk with them a lot?
Diana: You can kind of tell the ones that want to talk and the ones that are just here for their little romantic retreat. I ask them questions, and if I sense that they’re just here to have a getaway then I don’t talk too much with them. But most of the guests do really enjoy talking. I serve breakfast all the way from 8:30 to 10:30. I like it whenever everybody comes at the same time so I can spend more time chatting with them.
Lynn: I’m a talker — I love people. We’ve had guests, myself and the guy will find something in common with business, sports, whatever, and end up smoking cigars by the fire pit.
Q: Do you have an idea of what portion of your guests are from outside Texas?
Diana: I would say half at least are from Texas, or more. From Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, even South Texas, West Texas, East Texas. All over.
Q: Do you consider yourselves to be retired, or semiretired?
Lynn: I would say this is kind of the initial phase of retirement. I’m not a “retire and gospend five days a week on the golf course” kind of guy. I always want to be doing something.
Diana: I probably work harder now than I did, but it doesn’t feel like work, honestly.
Q: What is your competition in the area?
Lynn: There’s a lot of places to stay in Hill Country. There’s a lot of Airbnbs, VRBOs. When you look the concentration of what we call a pure bed-andbreakfast, there’s some but there’s not as many as one would think. You know, you have now an investment culture, I would say, where people want to invest in real estate. So it’s easy just to have a property manager, someone to come in and clean. That’s not what we wanted. We just wanted to be more personal.
Q: Apart from the breakfast, do you provide anything else for your guests? Social activities?
Diana: I also offer picnic baskets — sandwiches, charcuterie boards, chocolate-covered strawberries, those sorts of extra things. We have three fire pits, so people can hang out around the fire pits. We just bought an outdoor theater system so we can show movies. We took an old grain bin and made a little bar out of it, so guys can watch football or whatever out there.
Q: Is this place profitable? Or more of a labor of love?
Lynn: It is profitable, but anytime you’re talking about a passion you always look at that first. Obviously, it will be more profitable for us when we build on the extra room. We did a lot of research before, too. We hired some marketing experts. We’re at the point now, with six rooms, where you start getting sustainability. You get up to 12 or so, there’s profit there. Anything over that you’re talking about an enterprise.
Q: How long do you plan to operate this place before being entirely retired?
Diana: I don’t know — I guess when we get tired of it! We’ve had friends that owned bed-and-breakfasts. We have a new friend, in fact, that had one in North Carolina for 17 years. They said the last couple years they were ready to go. But at this point, I still can’t imagine it.