Furniture, Concert Tickets, and Second Chances: How Ryan Bowen Supports The Other Side Academy

Walk into the brick-front building at 667 East 100 South in downtown Salt Lake City and the first thing that hits you isn't what you'd expect from a place that houses 130 people coming out of addiction, homelessness, and prison. It's the calm. Students in uniforms move with purpose. A moving truck pulls in. Someone's mopping a floor like it's their job — because it is. This is The Other Side Academy, and the entire operation runs on a radical bet: that the same people the rest of the system has given up on can rebuild their lives by working, side by side, in real businesses, for 2.5 years, with no government money and no excuses.

That bet only works because Utah keeps betting on them too. The Ryan Bowen Other Side Academy partnership is part of that — quiet, consistent, and built around the two things Bowen knows how to give well: physical goods that fuel the academy's self-funded businesses, and event tickets that give people in recovery something to actually live for on a Saturday night.

For Bowen — Tooele-raised entrepreneur, founder of Bowen Investments, and CEO of King B Distribution — this isn't a one-time photo op. It's a recurring contribution to one of the most-watched recovery models in the country.

What The Other Side Academy Actually Is (And Why The Bet Works)

Most people hear "addiction recovery program" and picture a clinical rehab. The Other Side Academy is something else entirely. The Academy describes itself plainly on its own site: "We are The Other Side Academy; a self-sustaining, non-profit helping address the problems of homelessness, criminal behavior and long-term addiction through a 2.5-year residential life skills and training program for men and women. Students pay nothing to attend and the Academy does not take any government funds for operations."

That last part is the radical part. No government funding. No insurance billing. The whole machine pays for itself through a portfolio of real businesses run by the students:

• The Other Side Movers — one of the highest-rated moving companies in the Salt Lake Valley, generating roughly $2 million a year
• The Other Side Thrift Boutique — high-end consignment-style stores in Salt Lake and Millcreek selling gently used furniture, brand-name clothing, and housewares
• The Other Side Donuts — a donut shop staffed by people in recovery
• A construction company, lawn care, and other ventures
• The Other Side Village — a permanent housing community for transitioning homeless residents

Students work their way through the program like a university — freshman, sophomore, junior, senior — and progress by demonstrating the kind of soft skills (showing up on time, taking accountability, not lying) that incarceration and addiction had stripped away. The outcomes back the model: "Seventy percent of our graduates remain drug free, 88 percent remain crime free, and 100 percent are employed when they finish the program," a longtime member of the Academy's leadership has noted.

For a guy like Bowen, who has spent his career building self-sustaining businesses and pulling himself up from a Tooele teenager flipping cars to a multi-sector entrepreneur, the TOSA model speaks his language. He's not funding a charity — he's fueling a business that happens to save lives.

How Ryan Bowen Supports The Other Side Academy

The Ryan Bowen Other Side Academy partnership runs on two lanes that punch above their weight.

1. Furniture Donations That Fuel the Thrift Boutique

The Other Side Thrift Boutique is one of the academy's flagship social enterprises — but here's the thing most donors don't know: the thrift boutique exists because of donated furniture in the first place. As one profile of the program describes it, "the thrift boutique got started when people who were moving offered to donate items they didn't want to take with them. The moving company collected so much furniture and sundry other items, TOSA started selling it."

That's the model Bowen plugs directly into. Through his businesses — Bowen Investments, his hospitality brands like Sundays Best and Pica Rica BBQ, BCC Construction, and his broader portfolio — he donates furniture and equipment that's been cycled out of his commercial spaces. Restaurant refreshes, office relocations, apartment turns at BCC properties — instead of letting that inventory go to landfill or a generic donation pile, it gets routed to The Other Side Academy.

Why it matters in concrete terms:

• High-quality furniture moves fast at the boutique and generates real revenue that funds the program directly
• Every donated item is a piece of inventory the students themselves load, transport, refurbish, and sell — meaning it's not just a check, it's job training
• The thrift stores hand-pick their inventory for quality, so commercial-grade pieces from Bowen's businesses fit perfectly into what shoppers actually want

The Millcreek boutique reviewers consistently call out the quality of items they find there — desks for $75, name-brand clothing, electronics. Bowen's contributions help keep that inventory pipeline full.

2. Concert and Sporting Event Tickets for Students in Recovery

This is the part of the partnership that quietly does the most emotional heavy lifting.

Recovery is hard. The first year of sobriety, in particular, is a grind of routine, accountability sessions, work, and not much else. Students at TOSA live in community, follow a strict schedule, and rebuild discipline they often haven't had in years. They're not getting wild Saturday nights — and they shouldn't be. But they do need joy. They need things to look forward to. They need to remember what a normal, sober good time even feels like.

Bowen donates concert tickets and sporting event tickets — pulled from his suite holdings and business allocations across Salt Lake City venues — directly to The Other Side Academy for distribution to students and staff. We're talking Utah Jazz games. Concerts at Utah State Fairpark, The Complex, and other major SLC venues. Sporting events that put students in good seats, in normal crowds, doing what regular people do on a Friday night.

It sounds small. It isn't. For someone who's just finished their first 90 days clean — someone who can't remember the last time they sat in a stadium without being high, broke, or running from something — a Jazz game with their TOSA peers is a complete reframe of what a sober life can look like. That moment is what the entire program is selling, and Bowen helps deliver it.

It's also a fit with how Bowen gives across his other charity work. He's used the same approach to support the Ron McBride Foundation — donating concert suites as auction items and event experiences for kids and donors. With TOSA, the tickets go a step further: they go directly into the hands of people in active recovery, as reward, as motivation, and as proof that the life they're building is worth the work.

Why TOSA Matters to Salt Lake City

It's hard to overstate what The Other Side Academy has done for Utah. Since launching, the program has:

• Pulled 130-plus residents off the streets, out of jail cells, and into stable, sober community at any given time
• Built a moving company, two thrift stores, a donut shop, a construction company, and lawn-care service that collectively generate millions in self-sustaining revenue
• Expanded into Denver and acquired multiple Salt Lake housing facilities, including the Avenues Courtyard Senior Living Center for $4.2 million, to house up to 160 students
• Launched The Other Side Village — a permanent affordable housing community for people transitioning out of chronic homelessness
• Refused government funding entirely, which means every dollar in the door comes from people who chose to send it

As one TOSA student named Lola put it in a profile of the program: "We don't want government funding. We don't want to rely on anybody anymore. We've been relying on the government when we've been incarcerated. We've been relying on stealing from people. We've been relying on our parents. We haven't taken care of ourselves ever. We want to take care of ourselves now. That does something to us that makes us whole again."

That's the energy Bowen is buying into. It's also why TOSA grads end up running things — Diego Cortez, a former gang member, is now a leadership staff member. Clay Josewski went from hating the program to managing it. Tiffany Blair, Tori Randall, Robbie Myrick — graduates who now coach, manage, and mentor the next class. The flywheel works.

Getting Involved With The Other Side Academy

If Bowen's example resonates, TOSA makes it easy to plug in at any scale:

• Hire The Other Side Movers for your next move (501-456-3007). They're consistently rated the top-tier moving company in the Salt Lake Valley and every dollar funds the program.
• Shop or donate to The Other Side Thrift Boutique — call 801-810-4222 for free furniture pickup. They'll come get heavy items you'd otherwise have to haul yourself.
• Order from The Other Side Donuts at The Other Side Village.
• Donate event tickets, suites, or experiences the way Bowen does — concerts, games, anything that gives students a glimpse of normal joy. Contact TOSA directly through theothersideacademy.com.
• Make a direct financial gift. Donations buy housing capacity, expand the program to new cities, and keep the no-government-funding model alive.
• Refer someone who needs the program. No cost to attend, 2.5-year residential commitment, men and women welcome.

The academy's headquarters is at 667 East 100 South in Salt Lake City.

The Bigger Picture

The Ryan Bowen Other Side Academy partnership is a smaller, quieter piece of his philanthropy than the Christmas shopping trips with Firemen and Friends for Kids or the long-running Ron McBride Foundation support — but in some ways it's the most aligned with how Bowen actually thinks. TOSA isn't a charity that asks for handouts. It's a self-sustaining business model that gives broken people a way to rebuild through work. Bowen, who built Pure Water Solutions of America from a 19-year-old's idea into the largest independent office water company in the country before exiting, knows exactly what that compounding looks like.

The furniture goes into the boutique. The boutique generates revenue. The revenue funds the program. The program puts a man or woman through 2.5 years of sober, accountable work. They graduate and join the staff or hold down a job. The cycle compounds.

And on the nights between, somebody who used to think their best days were behind them is sitting in a Jazz game on Bowen's tickets, learning what sober joy feels like.

That's the whole bet. That's the whole point.