LITTLE ROCK — Legally Blonde comes to mind in talking on the phone with Jen Barnett about her dreams and ambitions. No, she’s not a blonde and doesn’t carry a Chihuahua, like Elle Woods in the movie. But she totally gets the comparison. “I got a lot of that in graduate school,” she says. Freshfully LLC aims to bring good local food to people in cities across the South. How could you doubt she’ll be successful when she offers wisdom like this: “You go to war with the radishes you have — not the radishes you wish you had.”
Talk about your Generals Patton and MacArthur. Wouldn’t you follow someone with that kind of determination?
She concedes that she and her business partner, Sam Brasseale, started with “a pipe dream.”
They wanted good, locally produced food but couldn’t find it. Then they entered a business contest and won $30,000 and established their company 14 months ago.
She did her graduate work at Emory University in Atlanta in “innovations,” which seems a good fit for the bachelor’s degree in psychology she got at Auburn University.
Between those stints in school, she worked in advertising, concentrating on Web strategies. And that’s the thread that will hold the network together, she says.
In each of the 15 cities she aims to incorporate into the network, a blogger will make posts on Freshfully.com, she says.
The week before she and her partner visit the cities, they contact area farmers to set up meetings.
“We were in Nashville yesterday, touring some farms. So it was a good week,” she said last week.
The ideal base of operations in the cities is a centrally located coffee shop, where farmers can make their deliveries, although there will be drop-off and pickup sites around town, even farmers markets, which Barnett doesn’t see as competition. “We bring more traffic to them.”
The farmers get their 86 percent of the sale within a week, she said.
They hope to find that shop in Little Rock when they come to town Oct. 18.
Home base is Birmingham, Ala., where they have 14 to 18 sites. Knoxville, Tenn., is in the bag with two. Along with Little Rock, the other target cities are: Huntsville, Montgomery and Mobile, Ala.; Nashville and Chattanooga, Tenn.; Jackson, Miss.; Pensacola and Tallahassee, Fla.; Atlanta, Savannah and Macon, Ga.; and Charleston, S.C.
The company’s slogan? “Who’s Your Farmer?”
The second piece of Benton’s events center complex will be an 80-room Marriott hotel.
The Saline County city’s voters approved by a 3-to-1 margin in November to extend a 1.5 percent hospitality tax to build the 27,000-square-foot, $8 million center. The city has been using the high school and churches to hold events.
Construction of the complex in the Hickory Square Shopping Center will begin in a few weeks, says Mark Fikes, Advertising and Promotions Commission chairman.
The hotel will be built by Ken and Umang Patel doing business as Benton Lodging Inc., Umang said last week.
The hotel will be under Marriott’s Fairfield Inn & Suites brand, he said. It will be attached to the center by an enclosed walkway.
If you have a tip, call Jack Weatherly at (501) 378-3518 or e-mail him at
Business, Pages 72 on 09/30/2012