This is the fourth and final part of a series featuring East Providence businesses named “the best” in the state, according to an annual competition held by ‘Rhode Island Monthly’. Check out Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

As we wrap up our series featuring the local, East Providence businesses crowned “the best” in the East Bay (or the state as a whole), we’re drawn to this week’s theme — when style meets substance.

It’s easy enough to talk a big game when it comes to opening a successful business, but customers will notice quickly if the reality turns out to be more gilded than gold.

Both of these local businesses have high amounts of swagger, boasting features that you won’t find anywhere else; whether in the decor, the offerings, or the promised experience. And then they back it up by delivering on what they promise.

Hit me baby, one more dye
We’ve all been traveling somewhere and gotten a little homesick, but has recent world events made you homesick for an entirely different decade?

If you spent any of your formative years as a kid in the 1990s, you’ll feel like you’ve transported back into a simpler, more fun and innocent time when you walk in the door to Hauscall, located smack in the middle of the city across from City Hall on Taunton Avenue, which opened in January of 2025 and just racked up its first “RI Monthly” nod for the best “Colorful Salon” in the state.

The eye will likely be immediately drawn to the sizable neon sign artfully displaying the salon’s elegantly-designed cursive logo. But they’ll soon dart around, spotting feature after feature that will further make you wonder if you somehow just walked into the green room of Nickelodeon’s “All That”. From the vintage pop-culture magazines on the wall to the see-through, acrylic chairs, the intentional vision of the space is evident immediately.

“I think the word we kept using for this space was ‘intentional’ pieces,” said Hauscall owner, Kayla Newman, in a recent interview. “Things that people can't just buy off Amazon and put in the salon. We wanted stuff that I either thrifted or I found that just felt super nostalgic to the 90s.”

Ironically enough, however, her path to a throne as Rhode Island’s most colorful stylist started off as anything but intentional.

“I thought I wanted to be a chef,” she said in a recent interview with a laugh. “I still love cooking. Maybe one day I'll open a restaurant hair salon.”

Originally from Seekonk, the now-35-year-old Newman attended Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School in Franklin, Mass., where she ultimately ditched the apron and wound up pursuing her license as a stylist. While she said it was not all sunshine and roses in high school, she graduated at 18 with a job already lined up at a salon in Seekonk called “Running With Scissors.”

“It was where my grandmother got her perms,” she recollected. “I was the only young girl there, I was fresh out of school. I wanted to paint everyone’s hair crazy colors. It was good for me because all the younger girls came to me, but I was still doing roller sets and perms and I was like, oh my gosh, I don’t want to do this forever.”

After a few years and a short hiatus to South Carolina, Newman wound up at her first “cool girl hair salon” on Hope Street in Providence, where she spent six years further honing her craft and building a clientele, many of who have followed her for years due to her ability to pull off vivid color creations amidst customized cuts.

Newman’s first solo venture was as a franchisee for a larger company where she was given a 100-square-foot studio to try to further build a brand for herself. But in the middle of that grind, she felt something else pulling her.

“I went to barber school because I really want to be a barber,” she said. “My grandfather was a barber and his barber shop was actually on this road like six buildings away.” Townies might remember the spot — Andy’s Barber Shop. She succeeded in getting her barber’s license and worked for four years at Urban Fellow, where she found a mentor in its owner, Seth Davis.

“He was a great boss. He was knowledgeable. He was really on top of his stuff,” she said. “He was really into like education and pushing forward and always making his barbers level up and be better and I was like, ‘Wow, if I ever become an owner, that's what I want to be.’”

But the barber business ran its course, and Newman’s evolution towards being a salon owner began in 2018, inside a 450-square-foot space within a renovated mill building in Pawtucket. Covid has other plans for that, however, and “Studio V” closed in 2020.

But the ideas and dreams, like the size of her business ventures, kept coming and kept growing. In 2021, Newman opened “Haus of Color” in East Providence, an 1,100-square-foot salon that ultimately housed six stylists and a nail tech. And while she looks back on the memories from that shop fondly, and much of its style and flair lives on in Hauscall today, that venture ultimately passed its expiration date in 2024. But if you ask Newman, it all felt somewhat pre-ordained.

“I believe in things happening for a reason,” she said. “And it just completely happened the way it was supposed to all fold out.”

While looking for spaces to open Haus of Color, she had seen and coveted the unit that now houses Hauscall, although it wasn’t available at the time. Lo and behold, when she was looking for her next move, the space became available. After a rebranding effort and a laborious renovation, assisted by her handy husband, Newman is now the proprietor of a nine-station salon with two nail techs and an assistant.

Business has been good, between the clients she has cultivated over the decades, and new customers who have been attracted by the salon’s unique decor and its colorful, talented staff.

“We had our grand opening in March and that I think just blew us up,” she said. “The mayor came, we had a big ribbon cutting. I never got to do any of that in my old space. It just it felt so real.”

Newman said that the award recognition was special and meant a lot, but she appreciates even more the ability to be a job creator for a talented crop of younger stylists who she now manages.

“The girls who work here are so talented, and knowing that I was the mentor bring them in and get them to this point, it just feels so good,” she said. “Being able to raise these girls up and give them these opportunities that they might have not had at another salon, it’s so important to me.”

And as has always been the case since the beginning of her career, Newman loves the feeling of making someone feel seen as they authentically feel inside.

“It literally brings a person closer to who they are. It brings them out of their shell,” she said. “I just like that. We can help people become the best versions of themselves.”

Business name: Hauscall
Address: 136 Taunton Ave, East Providence, RI 02914
Website: Hauscall.glossgenius.com

The bar where everyone knows your game
The blueprint for running a successful sports bar, like building a Super Bowl-winning football team, might not be the most complicated on paper — but it’s also easier said than done.

You need reliable, talented people at key positions. You need a desire to perform at a high level despite the significant pressures inherent within the industry, and you need to do what you do better than your competitors, who are all seeking to do the same thing.

Hometown entrepreneur Jay Oliver has harnessed that winning recipe at The Local, winner of the coveted “Best Neighborhood Bar in the East Bay” accolade in this year’s “Best of Rhode Island” awards.

Since opening in 2021, Oliver and The Local have grabbed local and statewide critical acclaim for delivering exactly what their patronage wants — lots of televisions showing lots of sports, all the time.

“Our facility is geared completely towards the sports fan,” Oliver said in a recent interview. “We have 16 different TVs, we have all the game packages, we have a state-of-the-art sound system. We can show you pretty much every game that you could ever want to see.”

But sports fans can watch their teams in lots of different places. What sets the good bars apart from the “also-rans” is what puts The Local a cut above — good food made hot and fresh, cold drinks on tap, and quality service.

“We try to pay crazy attention to our details,” Oliver said. “Our kitchen is probably one-tenth the size of a normal restaurant’s kitchen and we just simplify things down. We prep in order to put out good food in a small space. From what we’re working with, it’s kind of impressive what we’re able to do. We're not buying any bulk stuff. We're making everything fresh. We're trying to do local ingredients as often as possible.”

Oliver also owns and operates Moving Dough Pizza, which started as a food truck and now has a brick and mortar in Barrington. Bringing that fresh, wood-fired pizza option to patrons — the only wood-fired pizza option in East Providence, Oliver states — has been a draw.

And it wouldn’t be a true Townie joint, owned and operated by a lifelong East Providence resident, if there wasn’t some aspect of community-based altruism involved.

“We're called ‘The Local’. We try to support, as much as we can, our little league teams and local charities and stuff like that,” Oliver said. “On some Monday nights we host ‘The Local Give Back’, which is where we'll give back between 10% and 20% of our profits or our total sales to a charity. We want it to stay in the community. That’s what it’s all built off of.”

Additionally, Oliver said that all teachers and first responders who come to the bar get 15% off; and not just those from East Providence.
“At a time when restaurants are struggling, we try to do what we can with what we can do,” he said. “I believe if you give back as much as you can and you support the community then the community will, in turn, support you.”

Business name: The Local
Address: 478 Waterman Ave., East Providence, RI 02914
Website: TheLocalRI.com