John Macomson’s entrepreneurial spirit sparked at a young age.
He grew up in Cherokee Springs, a rural community outside of Boiling Springs, where his family grew peach orchards. He remembers his mother and family often traveling to Hendersonville, North Carolina to pick apples to bring home and store. When he was just 6-years-old, he saw an opportunity with those apples.
“I found I could take the apples to school and sell them to kids for a nickel,” he said. “I think about that today, and I think, you were 6 years old and you were loading up your book satchel with apples, but it worked.”
Until a teacher stopped and halted his operation, of course. But that was just the beginning of Macomson’s business endeavors.
Today, Macomson owns and operates Carolina Software as a Service, Inc (CSaaS) and Fat Ass Heifer Cidery, part of Motlow Creek Ranch and Cider Company, Inc. in Campobello, two of many successful Black-owned businesses in Spartanburg County.
August is recognized as National Black Business Month, a time to celebrate the prosperity of Black business owners in the Upstate.
Computers, cows and cider – John Macomson does it all
When Macomson started college at Clemson University, he knew he wanted to work for himself.
“I ended up going into Clemson as an administrative management major and as part of that I had a computer science class, and I fell in love with computers,” he said. “I changed majors my first year and I didn't look back.”
Macomson graduated with an MBA, and eventually started his software company in 1994, first as an accounting software reseller. In the early 2000s, the company shifted gears from a reseller to designing and owning software solutions to sell to clients.
Today, CSaaS provides IT solutions and custom software applications to clients like the National Association for Campus Activities, the SC Department of Social Service and Spartanburg School Districts 1 and 3, among others. Many of the current clients are crossovers from when the company was a reseller.
“We know that we're small and almost all our customers are significantly larger than we are, so we like to think when a client trusts us to do something, it's imperative that we deliver. I think that's one of the things that sets us apart,” Macomson said.
However, when the software company hit a rough patch during the transition in the early 2000s, Macomson also invested in another passion – farming. Macomson had sights set on opening a recreation ranch with miniature cows as the draw.
“I got into cows. I wanted to have something I could do by myself without having to have any employees just in case I got into that situation again,” he said.
In 2014, Macomson purchased a farm that doubled the size of land he previously owned. With the 51 acres of property, Macomson combined the love for cows with something new – producing cider – and started Motlow Creek Ranch and Cider Company in 2015.
“I read an article about the upswing and hard cider and how that was coming back, and I like wine, and I'm thinking, I think I know a little something about growing apples,” he said. “But when we started doing more research and went to training on it, we realized there was a lot we didn't know about making cider. But we worked with it for a couple of years and got things going.”
After a few years of research about cider and what apples grow best in humid South Carolina weather, Macomson opened Fat Ass Heifer Cidery in June 2019.
“This gave us a chance to combine the two,” he said. “With the cows and the land, I found farming to be relaxing. I found the opportunities in farming today are not as we traditionally think of it. It's not so much selling a product as much as it is selling the experience.”
Macomson said most of his orchards are still young, but he’s growing 30 different varieties of apples on the farm. The two he’s most focused on are Harrison Cider Apples and Hewes Crab Apples. The cider names, like Sassy Black Baldie and Lowline Dirty Heifer, stick to the cattle theme.
There are ongoing plans to expand the ranch and build an event space on the farm that has a serene few of the mountains. The space will have a tasting room, gift shop and will hold weddings and other events.
While the COVID-19 pandemic brought some setbacks, Macomson said having the software company helped sustain the cidery during the summer of 2020. He said the timeline for the event space will be within the next few years.
Though the two companies could not be more different, Macomson says he uses the same mentality to run them both.
“On the entrepreneurial side, I enjoy looking at different ideas. I enjoy looking at things and trying to make them go,” he said. “While it's tense, at the same time, you don't really feel like it's work. You almost feel like, man, I get paid to do this.”
Fat Ass Heifer Cider is open Saturdays from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. and is located at 10125 New Cut Road Campobello, SC.
The Seafood Spot brings authentic Lowcountry cuisine to the Upstate
Greg and Kenisha Brantley are both from the Low Country of South Carolina. With Greg from Hampton County and Kenisha from Beaufort, they each grew up around Gullah Geechee culture and Low Country seafood at its finest.
Five years ago, the couple moved to the Upstate, where their daughters were both studying in college.
“One day we wanted seafood and we started looking, and there was nothing like what we had in the Low Country,” Mr. Brantley said.
That’s when the idea to open their own restaurant took off. Mr. Brantley said he knew how to cook and still had plenty of connections in the Low Country. In 2018, the Brantleys opened their first location for The Seafood Spot in Greenville. The Spartanburg location opened not long after in December 2020.
“We had a lot of people coming from Spartanburg to eat at the restaurant ask if we would come to Spartanburg,” Mr. Brantley said. “The community has shown a lot of love in coming out.”
The Seafood Spot sources blue crabs out of Beaufort and shrimp when it’s available. They also get fresh seafood – oysters, fish and scallops – from Hampstead, North Carolina.
Opening the Spartanburg store during a pandemic created challenges, but Mr. Brantley said the restaurant relied a lot on friends and family to support the store as employees. However, the spot remains successful.
The most important part of the experience, Mr. Brantley said, is the origin of the fare.
“All the recipes are from the Low Country and passed down from generation to generation,” Mr. Brantley said. “It comes from our heritage, the history of the Low Country, where most of the slaves came out of it, and the Gullah people. It brings Low Country seafood to the Upstate. We cook it with love and we’re proud to be here in this community.”
The Seafood Spot is open Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m. and is located at 200 Dawn Redwood Dr #600, Spartanburg.
Smallcakes Cupcakery and Creamery
Clevedale Historic Inn and Gardens
A list of Black-owned businesses crowd-sourced by OneSpartanburg, Inc., the City of Spartanburg and Spartanburg County can be found here.
Kathryn Casteel covers growth and development for the Spartanburg Herald-Journal. Contact Kathryn at [email protected] or on Twitter @kathryncasteel.