Home Care In Saxapahaw, NC

I WAS polishing off a steaming bowl of coconut curry soup when a server appeared bearing a plate of plump pan-seared diver scallops atop creamy applewood-bacon succotash and braised asparagus. The food was befitting a candlelit restaurant, but I had a view of gas pumps outside and, a few steps from my table, fluorescent-lighted aisles packed with workaday necessities — toilet paper, motor oil, sauerkraut juice (aids digestion, according to the label).

This jarring contrast of farm-fresh food and service-station atmosphere is part of the appeal of the place where I was dining: the Saxapahaw General Store (1735 Saxapahaw-Bethlehem Church Road; 336-376-5332; saxgenstore.com), a no-frills convenience store and restaurant that has sparked a revival in the former mill town of Saxapahaw in central North Carolina.

When its cotton mill closed in 1994, the town of Saxapahaw — a name that begs to be pronounced (sax-ah-puh-HAW) with an exaggerated Southern drawl — began to fade as well. After all, this tiny rural town on the banks of the Haw River is barely a blip on the map (and as far as my confused GPS was concerned, as easy to locate as Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County).

“When we first came, people thought we were kind of nuts, because it seems like it’s in the middle of nowhere,” said Jeff Barney, the cook (and a former butcher) who, together with his partner, Cameron Ratliff, took over the general store in 2008. Working with nearby farmers, the pair stocked the shelves with local products and started serving freshly prepared meals.

As word spread about the unusual setting of Mr. Barney’s ambitious seasonal cuisine, Saxapahaw began attracting curious foodies from surrounding cities like Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Greensboro and Winston-Salem.

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And now, the Saxapahaw General Store is no longer the sole attraction in town.

Last May, the Haw River Ballroom (1711 Saxapahaw-Bethlehem Church Road; 336-675-2440; hawriverballroom.com) opened in the former dye room of the historic mill. Now a soaring, three-story music venue, the Ballroom also hosts a variety of interesting events and has a first-floor cafe called Cup 22, which serves pastries and locally roasted coffee.

Across the street is Saxapahaw Artists (1610 Jordan Drive; 336-525-2394; saxapahawartists.com), a two-story art gallery showcasing works from 50 regional artists. And nearby is the site of the town’s popular summertime farmers’ market.

“It was probably about 50 people a weekend the first year,” recalled Heather LaGarde, an owner of the Haw River Ballroom and a founder of Saxapahaw’s farmers’ market, which began in 2005. “Now it’s about 1,000 to 2,000 people that come out to that,” she said.

But the busiest place in town is now the Eddy Pub (1715 Saxapahaw-Bethlehem Church Road; 336-525-2010; theeddypub.com). Building on the success of the Saxapahaw General Store, Mr. Barney and Ms. Ratliff partnered with another couple to open this gastropub — not a description often used around here — in a second-floor space in the former mill in December 2010.

It’s a step that has been well received.

On a bitterly cold weekday evening in November, the cozy, wood-beamed pub was packed. As bartenders poured pints of North Carolina-brewed beers (the only type on tap), servers bustled among tables carrying cheese plates, juicy bratwursts and platters of fish and chips — traditional pub grub tweaked to emphasize local fare. By 6 p.m., a small crowd had formed in the doorway, waiting for tables.

“It was sort of a sleepy town, not much going on,” Mr. Barney said. “Now we’ve turned into a bit of a destination.”

Associate Professor Elena Kennedy, Elon’s Doherty Emerging Professor of Entrepreneurship, shared how specific strategies developed by residents and business owners have created “civic wealth” for a popular Alamance County community only a short drive from campus.

An Elon University professor who researches social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial community formation recounted the history and successful economic growth of a North Carolina mill town when she traveled to Puerto Rico in March for an annual conference featuring several of the world’s leading entrepreneurship scholars.

Associate Professor Elena Kennedy, Elon’s Doherty Emerging Professor of Entrepreneurship, joined with colleagues from four other universities for the keynote opening panel of the 2023 Sustainability Ethics and Entrepreneurship Conference held March 2-5 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The developmental conference provides an annual forum for what is described as a worldwide network of scholars dedicated to advancing the scholarship and practice about sustainability, ethics & entrepreneurship.

The opening panel – Researching Civic Wealth Creation: Insights from Qualitative and Quantitative Studies across Contexts – explored what occurs “when communities, entrepreneurs, and supporters of local initiatives coalesce to improve their well-being and vitality through cooperation, kinship, and commerce.”

Kennedy explored the entrepreneurial community of Saxapahaw, which grew out of a mill redevelopment project in a rural village in southern Alamance County, approximately 20 minutes away from Elon University’s main campus. She explained how early movers in the entrepreneurial community engaged in specific strategies to attract a broad range of stakeholders to mobilize resources to create both civic wealth and opportunities for new entrepreneurs within the village.

Since its formation, the community has established a farmer’s market, a food pantry, and a summer concert series that regularly draws large crowds from across the region. Kennedy discussed how Saxapahaw has also established support structure to meet the needs of village residents during the COVID-19.

Joining Kennedy on the panel were research colleagues from the University of Tennessee, Indiana University, the University of Oklahoma, and Technical University Munich.

Kennedy joined the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business in 2016 after earning a doctorate in organizations and social change from the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Her research focuses on strategic decision making in social enterprises, entrepreneurial community formation, and entrepreneurship education, and has been published in the Journal of Business Venturing, Public Management Review, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship, and Entrepreneurship Education & Pedagogy.

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Love School of Business Management & Entrepreneurship

SAXAPAHAW, N.C. — A North Carolina couple started their business Haw River Mushrooms over 10 years ago, and hope to expand into the value added and alternative protein industry.

Ches Stewart says he used to grow over 80 different kinds of vegetables, but now he and his wife Laura specialize in fungi.

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“There's a ton of people who are growing lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, that sort of thing. So we were looking for a niche product that we could grow on a small scale. So that's what led us to mushrooms,” Ches Stewart said.

After taking a class on mushrooms, he was hooked.

“We grow 10 to 12 different varieties of mushrooms throughout the year, all on supplement and hardwood sawdust,” said Ches Stewart.

They grow lion's mane, shiitake, pink, gold and blue oyster, black pearl, cinnamon cap, and reishi mushrooms.

“We grow about 800 to 1,000 pounds a week,” Ches Stewart said.

The farm also makes products from their mushrooms such as mushroom coffee, mushroom jerky, lion's mane crab cakes, tinctures and umami salt.

“Lion's mane is really cool because it's, we're using all of this and a lot of our value added products, which is what we're really scaling up,” Ches Stewart.

To help the business side of mushrooms, his wife Laura participated in the 2023 Velocity Demo Day in Winston-Salem.

“Through Velocity, there's actually a cohort of mentors and we've done a lot of kind of almost like mentorship speed dating, where we'll get to do roundtables and ask them different questions,” Laura Stewart said.

This is the eighth year of the Center for Creative Economy’s Velocity program, where 10 entrepreneurs compete for a $10,000 prizes to further their company.

“I feel like it helps you evolve as a founder, you know, to really kind of understand yourself and the strengths you're bringing to it and to kind of get get rid of any ego behind the things that you need to learn to get to the next stage,” Laura said.

The business owners work with mentors over 10 weeks to finalize their pitch, getting expert advice in marketing, finance, business, strategy and operations, sponsored by Wells Fargo, the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and many more.

The mentors are “all volunteers and they very, very generously volunteer their time to help growing businesses, learn, learn the ropes and figure out what they need to do to grow their company,” Laura Stewart said.

Officials from the program said 80 businesses across 10 states and five countries entered for a chance to be in this year's program. With an additional $10,000 prize being added to the stakes for a woman owned business, and officials stated 70% of this years entrepreneurs are women and 70% are founded by people of color.

“We've been growing mushrooms for 12 years, so we've been a farm business for a really long time. But now that we're making these prepared foods a mushroom jerky, we wanted to get into the consumer packaged goods space and we realized there's a learning curve associated with that. We needed new connections, new vocabularies and new ways of thinking about our business,” Laura Stewart said.

Laura gave her pitch to further their business in the value added and alternative protein industry - specifically their mushroom jerky, which has already won numerous awards, including two Sofi awards, from the Specialty Food Association.

They're asking for $10,000 to purchase a combi oven, which would speed up the time to make the jerky from 72 hours to five, along with the ability to make it on their farm instead of using communal equipment at another facility.

The Stewarts did not receive the top prize, but were awarded the Velocity Technology Award and the Velocity Marketing Services Award for $7,500. It will help in consulting services to build an app to address organic certification tracking and improve their marketing presence.

“Honestly, everybody who participated in this program is a winner. So the bigger prize really is the mentorship and the networking,” Laura Stewart said.

Ches says he looks forward to continue to grow their business with the help of his wife and their twins Sarah and Ella, as it’s more than just mushrooms.

“To build something for our family and for the girls. But we also want to build something in this community and lower Alamance County. So ultimately, so it's bigger than itself,” said Ches Stewart.

Officials for the program say since 2016, CCE’s creative accelerator has launched 90 companies, with 80% still in business making $14,000,000 in revenue and $21,000,000 in investments. To learn more about how to apply for ongoing programs visit the CCE website.

Haw River Mushrooms also has tours and agrotourism classes on their property.

Saxapahaw residents are hoping they can stop plans to build a theme park in their small Alamance County town.

Theme park designer Bob Baranick, who has worked on projects including Disney parks around the world, bought 21 acres of land along N.C. Highway 87 with plans to build Whirligig Woods- a theme park that would include thrill rides, a haunted land and a tree house resort.

Residents are concerned about the impact the theme park would have on the Haw River and worry about an increase in traffic and noise.

"I often joke with people that as soon as a stoplight comes to Saxapahaw, I'm out of here. Well, that would bring stoplights," said Joe Jacob, who owns Haw River Canoe and Kayak. "I see it as something that will change the local character of this community."

Emily Sutton of the Haw River Assembly, a river advocacy group, fears the park would not be conducive to the community.

“I think that, as it stands right now, it doesn’t fit into the community but Saxapahaw has such a cool history and, I mean, it’s a river town and I think that there is an opportunity for that to be reflected in the Whirligig park,” Sutton said.

Baranick said Whirligig Woods would celebrate the natural landscape and cater to families with younger children. He said he is taking the concerns of local residents to heart, saying “they have a lot of good points.”

"It would have been wise to touch base with the community before he decided to do what he decided to do," Jacob said.

Baranick emphasized that the theme park would be small, not the size of parks like Carowinds or Busch Gardens.

Jim Fletcher, who lives near the proposed site for the theme park said he thinks it will bring more business to the area.

"If anything, it's going to make it better. It's going to bring more children here, more chances for education," Fletcher said.

The project has yet to break ground and Baranick said it will likely be at least 18 months before construction begins, if ever. The project needs more investors and more buy-in from the community before it goes forward.

Baranick said he chose the location because it is scenic and in close proximity to the Triangle and Triad.