Jerrmy Corde Gawthrop

The trout surprised them.

Not Jerrmy Gawthrop and Clayton Suttle, as they'd specifically fished for them.

But the passers-by at a music festival in Colorado were caught off guard. They wanted to know how the festival-loving duo got such fresh food in such a remote location. It went like this: They sneaked away to catch a few from a stream that bordered the festival grounds. They brought the catch back, cooked them, then sold the fish to hungry music fans. Suttle and Gawthrop rarely had official vending permits at the festivals. Instead, they just sold what they could, when they could.

"That was my introduction to food and music," Gawthrop says. "Just flailing out there, paying for my party."

The duo made very little money. But enough to get them to the next event was all they ever wanted.

More than a decade later, the philosophy of fresh food and music remains. Gawthrop and Suttle teamed up to open Greenhouse Grille, which eventually expanded into a location nearly three times as large. In the last 18 months, they've also opened two other restaurants in Fayetteville. Woodstone Craft Pizza began serving in August 2014, and Cardamom & Curry opened in early July.

All the while, Gawthrop has worked to promote music in the area. He teamed up with musician and promoter Bryan Hembree to produce the first Fayetteville Roots Festival, which was meant as a small-scale event at Greenhouse. A burst water pipe damaged the restaurant just hours before the festival was to debut, however. A move to George's Majestic Lounge preserved the idea, which has only continued to grow. The most recent Fayetteville Roots Festival concluded Aug. 30, having expanded into multiple venues and attracted marquee talents and thousands of fans.

Gawthrop's recipe for success continues to mix food and music.

Fresh from the Festival

Gawthrop finished college one class short of a degree in public relations. He lacks only French 4. Restaurant jobs and unlicensed catering gigs paid his way through school. A Bentonville native, he attended Northwest Arkansas Community College, then the University of Arkansas so he didn't stray too far from home, a symptom of his being an only child, he says.

He worked the tables in the late 1990s at Blackboard Cafe in Bella Vista. One day when chef Gerald McGuffin and his crew got behind on orders, he convinced Gawthrop to move back to the kitchen. He promised Gawthrop he wouldn't make as much money as a server, but he'd have more fun. A promise of free beer for the kitchen staff played a role, too.

Immediately, McGuffin noticed Gawthrop possessed knife skills. Encouraged, Gawthrop worked to learn more.

"I found a love affair with it," he says, one that continues to this day, even if his day-to-day role in the kitchen is diminished by co-owning three restaurants. He can't be everywhere at once.

Gawthrop received no formal training in his cooking career. The time at Blackboard taught him how to cook, but trips to music festivals with Suttle developed his personal style. He and Suttle called themselves Ozark Organic Kitchen when they set up at events. They catered to the peace-and-love favoring crowds, selling fresh-as-they-could and organic-as-often-as-possible foods, sometimes from the stream beside the festival grounds. Soon, those long afternoons in a Subaru shifted into something more formal.

"We spent a lot of time on the road, so we started putting together a business model," Suttle says.

They created a plan for an organic restaurant like those they encountered in progressive food cities such as Denver and San Francisco.

Flying Ketchup

In times of manic schedules, people sometimes claim they sleep at the workplace. It's a charming colloquialism, but rarely true. Gawthrop literally slept under tables 8 and 9 while building the original Greenhouse Grille. An RV in the parking lot of the Archibald Yell Boulevard location later became his home. He would shower at the homes of friends.

The time living at the restaurant followed the end of a relationship that left him displaced, and there was plenty of work to be done and very little money. The partners used the same credit cards for the remodeling project they used to fund a music festival called The Great Unknown just a few years before, Suttle says. Suttle owned a construction company, so they took the work on themselves.

Greenhouse Grille opened in May 2006. When it did, it did so with the philosophies learned on the festival circuit. The partners pumped their used oil into an eco-friendly Mercedes diesel. They saved recycling before the city of Fayetteville had a dedicated recycling program. And they canvassed the Fayetteville Farmers' Market with flyers, begging people to come.

"We made up handbills like you would for a concert," Suttle says. "It was direct marketing to people we thought were our target demographic."

The start was rocky. Before they started offering brunch, Gawthrop discovered he couldn't remember how to make hollandaise sauce. He called a friend, who agreed to walk him through the steps. And Greenhouse Grille's house ketchup -- the same house ketchup served to this day -- came as an fortuitous accident. In a rush, Gawthrop slung spices into the blender. The blender lid came off, and the combination of ketchup and cayenne pepper got on the ceiling. But the finished project, what was left in the blender, was an immediate hit.

"We mapped it there. And we never changed it," Gawthrop says.

Suttle and Gawthrop had cooked many times, but never at the scale a restaurant demanded. Minor errors piled up.

"It's comical," Gawthrop says. "It wouldn't be if it had failed."

Nicolette Brock was an early customer at Greenhouse Grille. She would sit at the counter and eat her meal. Jerrmy Gawthrop, upon discovering she worked as a server at another local restaurant, invited her to switch jobs. They became friends first, then romantic partners. Two years after they met, they ran away to Eureka Springs.

"We just decided to get married," Nicolette Gawthrop says.

Sons Loukas, 5, and Jasper, 3, followed soon. Loukas already cooks, and like his father, he loves the band Journey.

Greenhouse Grille exceeded expectations. Gawthrop credits that to determination and knowing Fayetteville was ready for a locally sourced restaurant, something they call "conscience cuisine."

"We wanted it. And we were right. Our intentions were clear, and our servers were into it," he says.

His wife agrees. Even though they were still figuring out how to own a restaurant, they made an impression.

As business grew, the restaurant partners started to look longingly out their window. They were eyeing a larger building just to the south. They moved in September 2009, expanding from 44 seats to 130.

A Growing Empire

Gawthrop competed in the 2013 edition of the U.S. Foods Next Top Product Contest. He submitted a recipe for a black bean burger, an easier-to-reproduce version of a burger sold at Greenhouse. After winning the popular vote in a regional competition, he took the recipe to the World Food Championships in Las Vegas. He thought he would win, based on the ease of re-creation of the dish he concocted. Indeed, he won the competition, earning $20,000 in cash and prizes for himself and the restaurant. His black bean sliders are still available to any restaurants using US Foods as a vendor.

While in Las Vegas, Gawthrop and Suttle started moving forward. They wanted to build a place that served thin crust pizza from a wood-fired oven. As Gawthrop cooked at the national competition, he and Suttle exchanged ideas for potential pizzas.

Wood Stone Craft Pizza + Bar opened in August 2014 just to the south of the Greenhouse Grille location on South School Avenue in Fayetteville. Another perceived need was for an Indian restaurant, something the duo of restauranteurs responded to in early July with the opening of Cardamom & Curry in the Fiesta Square shopping center in Fayetteville. It's Indian-style, rather than purely Indian, Gawthrop says, and it sticks to the general plan of using local products whenever they can be found.

"We're passed where the sidewalk ended with our business plan," Suttle says.

Craig Gilbert, a longtime friend of Gawthrop's, served as general manager for Greenhouse for about five years before moving to the Walmart Museum in Bentonville. Gilbert also teamed up with Suttle and Gawthrop to produce The Great Unknown Festival, and he says Gawthrop inspires people to get behind his projects -- musical, restaurant or otherwise.

"It's a quiet and simple way he does things. He has a calm, smooth, quiet confidence. ... He doesn't get upset, even in a stressful restaurant environment," Gilbert says.

Developing the Future

Gawthrop has stepped away from his role as a day-to-day chef. He focuses more on recipe development and menu planning. Gilbert says that's a good fit for his friend, too.

"It's not just him being a good chef. It's him recognizing talent," he says.

The many locations keep him busy. Gawthrop plays music less than he once did, perhaps the one thing he most wishes he had time to do. He plays guitar and bass, and drums a little bit, too. Nicolette Gawthrop says her husband doesn't share his songs in public, but he write some nonetheless.

He's found other avenues for musical expression, too. After they returned from the festival circuit but before opening the original Greenhouse location, Suttle and Gawthrop presented a music festival of their own for three years. The Great Unknown Festival split its tenure between Elkins and Eureka Springs. It attracted a diverse crowd of musicians and fans. But like traveling to and from festivals, there wasn't much money in presenting them, either.

The second and larger Greenhouse Grille became a spot for live music. The first guest on the new stage was a local bluegrass group called Three Penny Acre. Gawthrop met local musician Bryan Hembree when the latter was playing in a group called Grandpa's Goodtime Fandango. After his new band got the invitation to play at Greenhouse, "we became quick friends," Hembree says.

Discussing music, they came up with a plan to host the one-night Roots Festival at Greenhouse. The Fayetteville Roots Festival has grown into a large-scale, four-day event that in 2015 hosted about two dozen bands and drew music fans from more than 20 states. Hembree and his wife, Bernice Hembree, now playing together in a band called Smokey & The Mirror, coordinate the music element of the Roots Festival. Gawthrop coordinates the food elements. But the lines are not that clear, and the organizers collaborate as often as possible.

"He just eats it up," Hembree says of Gawthrop and music. "If you walk into the kitchen at Greenhouse Grille, you hear music. He's a chef with a music addiction."

Giving Back

The music connection helps support his other passion -- charitable giving. A portion of the proceeds collected from the Roots Festival goes toward the local charity Feed Fayetteville, which promotes food education and food donations to those without. That element is critical for Gawthrop, Hembree says.

"He just comes at it with an altruistic heart," he says.

Charitable causes often came knocking at the front door of Greenhouse, asking for gift cards. Donations quickly became a policy at Greenhouse Grille, even when the fledgling restaurant was barely off the ground. It proved a critical decision for the business: Patrons were quick to forget the early mistakes of a restaurant that cared about the community.

"Every one of those, we didn't say no," Gawthrop says. "It was the karmic style -- giving to get. It bought us a lot of forgiveness."

Gawthrop contributes to several other charitable organizations. He serves this year as honorary chairman of Chefs in the Garden, a fundraiser taking place Sept. 15 at the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks. He's also hard at work on a project for the Buffalo River Coalition. Its Oct. 23 event at the Fayetteville Town Center will raise money earmarked for protection of the Buffalo River.

"I like doing things that have an impact," Gawthrop says.

Things like cooking, promoting music and giving money to worthy causes. Sometimes all at once.

NAN Profiles on 09/06/2015