1 of 7
Northern Neck Microgreens is a family affair, and everyone pitches in to ensure that weekly deliveries are ready to go and a fresh batch of seeds started. Photo by Corey Miller.
2 of 7
Everyone loves microgreens on a vegan burger. Photo by Corey Miller.
3 of 7
Northern Neck Microgreens ready for delivery. Photo by Corey Miller.
4 of 7
Virginia Gourmet owner Jeff Gouger, ready to sample products and interact with customers. Photo by Corey Miller.
5 of 7
A Virginia Gourmet gift basket includes an array of products that show off Virginia’s best. Photo by Corey Miller.
6 of 7
The Virginia Gourmet storefront in Williamsburg Premium Outlets. Photo by Corey Miller.
7 of 7
Wyatt Kemp and Leland James are committed to growing their business, BooKoo Foods, while carrying on the tradition of the Northern Neck’s close-knit camaraderie. Photo by Corey Miller.
BooKoo Foods
Wyatt Kemp has been throwing ingredients together since he was a child. He recalls being in his granddad’s kitchen mixing up spices in a bowl and learning through trial and error what worked and what didn’t.
Leland James had been an auto mechanic for 10 years, but also held an associate degree in business management. Tired of working for other people and dissatisfied with the state of the auto industry, he was ready for a change.
These days Kemp is doing his ingredient mixing in a ribbon blender and James is handling the mechanical and business end of BooKoo Foods, a powdered food manufacturer specializing in gluten-free food mixes that offer delicious alternatives to everyday glutenous foods such as cakes, cookies, brownies, pancakes and various dinner options.
The two had been friends for five years when Kemp was presented with the opportunity to buy out his employer’s gluten-free line of products. The owner of Abundant Life Foods, for whom Kemp worked, had outgrown his facility and in moving to a bigger one, decided to put all his focus on the dietary drinks he was producing. “When he decided to give up the gluten-free line, he basically put it on a shelf and left it there to die,” Kemp explains. “So, I thought, what if I take it over?”
After a call to James to gauge his interest, the two Northern Neck residents—Kemp’s a graduate of Lancaster High School and James graduated Chesapeake Academy—decided to take the plunge, running the numbers to determine the business’s viability. They started an LLC, applied for a business loan and had their lawyer write up a contract to buy the business, which they dubbed BooKoo Foods. Kemp is CEO and James handles CFO duties. “We shook hands on it and as of August 1, 2020, we were running it entirely by ourselves,” Kemp says. “It was a crazy time to start a business, but if we could make it work in a pandemic, we knew we’d be good once it’s over.”
It wasn’t enough for the duo to just take over the business; they wanted to leave their imprint and expand it from the start. “Packaging and label design, that’s what we birthed and brought to this point,” James says. Their inventory of gluten-free mixes has also increased significantly. “Forty to 50% of the mixes I’ve formulated myself,” Kemp says, explaining that 60% rolled over from the original business. Everything from mixing the products to printing the labels and from hand-packing the bags to hand sealing each one is done on-site at their facility in Lively.
BooKoo Foods is fully certified as a gluten-free facility, meaning that there are fewer than five parts per million of gluten present, an incredibly low ratio that assures consumers the products can be trusted not to cause allergic reactions. They’re also fully kosher-certified, which means that a rabbi comes monthly to ensure that all protocols are being followed. Flour is BooKoo’s biggest seller, but their pancake mixes are a close second. “Our pancakes are not as heavy in your gut as regular pancakes,” James says. “You won’t be as bloated after eating a stack of our pancakes.”
The array of gluten-free mixes is extensive, featuring such goodies as apple cinnamon muffins, raspberry scones and carrot cake mixes, to name just a few. Pancake mixes come in multiple varieties—buttermilk, banana, blueberry and chocolate chip—and 25-lb. sacks of the mixes are on regular reorder at pancake houses from Illinois to New Hampshire to California, including restaurants in Florida. “The Mayo Clinic started a gluten-free kitchen in one of their hospitals and they use our mixes,” Kemp says. “Their whole business model is based on using BooKoo products.”
In their quest to get the word out, James and Kemp are growing their website and increasing their social media presence. Locally, BooKoo Foods can be found at TriStar, Country Cottage, Miss Mary’s Seafood, Higher Health Foods, Kelsick Market in Gloucester, Deltaville Market, Urbanna Market and County Line Market in Callao. Meanwhile, they’re working on expanding their product presence in Gloucester and Williamsburg. Future plans involve increasing their representation in stores and restaurants, but they don’t want stores to compete with each other, so they try to spread out who carries them.
Although the building doesn’t look it from the outside, it’s expansive inside. The gluten-free processing room boasts a 1,000-lb. batch mixer, while small batches are mixed in plastic drums that are then placed on rollers for 45 minutes to blend thoroughly. Enormous blue bins hold 700 pounds of pancake or muffin mix ready to be packaged. In the sugar-free room, the massive mixer combines 1,000 pounds of mix at a time. Kosher ingredients can’t be stacked with nonkosher ingredients, so even the storage room has rules. Because of the necessity of keeping gluten out of the gluten-free room and sugar out of the sugar-free room, they’ve learned that cleaning is the most important part of their job. “We spend more time cleaning than producing,” both agree.
One thing they’ve learned is how owning their own business means spending lots of time problem-solving together. “He does the computer stuff because he’s better at it,” James admits. “I’m only eight years older, but the difference in tech know-how is huge.” James’ strength is maintenance and repairs, at least when he’s not paying the bills or ordering supplies. “I like to say that we’re building a house here,” Kemp says. “We’ve laid the foundation and now we’re starting to build the walls up. Every little thing we do is laying another brick.”
To help them in building up those walls are BooKoo’s staff, 70% of whom are related to one another. “They’re young and they all went to Lancaster High, except for one who was home-schooled,” Kemp says with pride. “I don’t know of any other young people running a business this size here. We’re trying to carry on the close-knit camaraderie of the Northern Neck.”
As they expand, they’re hoping to provide more opportunities for graduates to be able to stay in the region and thrive. “If you graduate and want to earn a living, you have to leave and that’s just wrong,” both agree. “We want people to be able to learn the food business and make a career out of this. We want to be an avenue for good careers.”
Northern Neck Microgreens
Sarah Rumsey Thrift should have known better. Like Michael Corleone in the “Godfather,” just when she thought she was out, she got pulled back in. Except in her case, it’s the food industry that called to her, not the mafia.
The fact is, with both parents’ being chefs, Rumsey Thrift couldn’t help but grow up as a foodie. “I was born into the food world,” she admits. “I grew up in my parents’ restaurant, Good Eats Café.” When she was younger, she decided that she wanted nothing to do with the world of food, but in more recent years, she found herself frequently and happily cooking for friends and coworkers.
A nurse at Riverside Home Health, she was having health issues of her own. She was on medication for long-term autoimmune issues, depression and rosacea and wanted to find a better way to address her overall health. Switching to a plant-based diet yielded immediate results and got her started growing sprouts—which carry essential vitamins, minerals and fiber and are a great source of antioxidants—in her kitchen. Soon, she was sharing her excess sprouts with neighbors.
From there, Rumsey Thrift stumbled onto microgreens. For the uninitiated, microgreens are the seedlings of edible vegetables and herbs and come in over 25 varieties. Whereas you eat the entire sprout, because you cut off the microgreens above soil level, only the leaves are harvested. Sprouts aren’t as nutritious as microgreens and have less fiber content. She’d found a winner.
Northern Neck Microgreens started in Rumsey Thrift’s kitchen with two full-size racks of microgreens. In spring 2021, she got her business license and by year’s end she expects to have four to five racks of seedlings going. Within the first month, she was reinvesting profits back into the business and neighbors were clamoring for her extra microgreens. The business has taken off so quickly that she and her partner, Kyle Burnell, are renovating their garage so they can move the racks from the house to a more spacious, permanent location dedicated solely to vertical farming.
When the business began, Rumsey Thrift used a mass text to notify people that microgreens were available on a first-come, first-served basis. She started by focusing on produce stands such as Dug In Farms, Garner’s Produce and the Old Farm Truck, along with subscriptions. Similar to a CSA subscription, customers pay once a month to receive a weekly delivery of microgreens directly at their doorstep. The microgreens are cut on the same day they’re delivered, with each subscriber getting the Harvest Blend, a selection of all the freshest cuts of the day.
The racks yield different amounts of microgreens, depending on the variety, but among the most popular are peas, sunflowers, radishes, cabbage, beets and Swiss chard. “Peas are a good introduction because they’re leafy and sweet like peas,” Rumsey Thrift says. “Our most popular is the spicy salad blend.”
Everyone in her household helps with the business of planting, harvesting and delivering. “My three kids, Avery, Benson and Oliver, dump out the trays and rinse them off after harvest,” she explains. “Avery is the first to tell strangers about our greens and she helps me label the trays.” Burnell’s responsibilities are more behind the scenes, focusing on the business side. “I cut and get everything ready, but he delivers it all,” she explains. That can make for a fair amount of driving since the delivery area for Northern Neck Microgreens is wide, running from Tappahannock to Reedville to Westmoreland. Deliveries are intentionally made in the evenings when people are more likely to be home and can refrigerate the greens promptly.
Not surprisingly, Rumsey Thrift is frequently asked what can be done with microgreens. “I tell people to throw them in a salad or on a burger, like my kids do,” she says with a laugh. “They taste like the mature version of the plant, so sunflower microgreens are comparable to spinach with a slightly nutty flavor. Radish microgreens have that peppery taste of a radish. They add so much flavor.”
Even with the business less than a year old, Rumsey Thrift has found a rhythm that works for her and her customers. She replants seeds every Sunday, which produce a bumper crop of microgreens by Wednesday of the following week. Every Wednesday is harvest day when microgreens are boxed up for delivery. “That way, there are always some seeds germinating and some seeds growing,” she says. “I harvest on Wednesdays.” It can be tough to take a vacation, but she’s found a willing substitute who’ll watch and water her greens during her occasional absences.
She’s the company’s social media driver—“In a past life, I was a photographer”—as well as the public face of Northern Neck Microgreens and the first to sing the praises of adding them to everything. “I tell people that it can’t hurt to try them because they add so much color, nutritional value, freshness and flavor to any dish,” she says. “We eat them pretty much every day.” The result of that and her plant-based diet is that she’s no longer on medication for depression and rosacea.
Ask Rumsey Thrift about her personal goals for the future and she’s upfront. “My goal is expanding the subscription service throughout the entire Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula areas,” she says. “I love food, I love eating and I love cooking. I didn’t open a restaurant like my parents did, but I’d love to eventually have a food truck or a storefront.” In the meantime, she’s helping guide people to taking out subscriptions so that they, too, can learn the myriad benefits of a daily dose of delicious microgreens.
Occasionally Rumsey Thrift has posted a “Meet the Team” picture showing the entire family working the racks, mainly to demonstrate the personal quality of her business. “I want people to understand that this is a family business,” she says with not a little pride. “By buying our microgreens, you’re putting food on the table for them.”
Virginia Gourmet
The beauty of going into Virginia Gourmet isn’t just the array of locavore and chemical-free food products, all of them made in Virginia. And it’s not just the variety of options for those who eat vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free, although that appeals to many people.
Rather, it’s something that author Barbara Kingsolver pointed out in her book, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.” It’s that every food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles, a major factor in adding to the country’s over-consumption of oil.
After Jeff Gouger and a partner bought Virginia Gourmet in August 2017 from the original founders, Joy Bryant and Lenny Berl, it didn’t take long for them to realize that the business wasn’t big enough to support them both. Gouger wound up buying out the partner and officially took over the operation on February 1, 2019, working without a paycheck the first three years. At the time of purchase, Virginia Gourmet had a small retail store—open on a very limited basis Tuesday through Friday—in McLaws Circle, an online presence and a commercial kitchen with a tiny café. Weekends were spent participating in the Yorktown Farmers’ Market and occasional special events.
Something needed to give. “The first thing I did was pull the plug on the café and apply for an ABC license to sell beer and wine to replace that revenue,” Gouger says from his sunny storefront. By 2019, he’d stopped doing the Yorktown Farmers’ Market, feeling that he was stretched too thin since the employee roster consisted of him alone. “I also wanted to see what the store could do if I opened it on Saturdays.”
It wasn’t long before Williamsburg Premium Outlets approached him about relocating there. They showed him two locations and offered him a three-month lease. “I thought the location was out of my league, but I knew pretty much right away that this was the place to be because of the foot traffic,” he says. “The only problem was I still had 13 months on my old lease. But I bit the bullet and went ahead.” Why? “I believe in providence.” Right away, he began to sell off the commercial kitchen equipment at a loss and hired staff.
The new location was so much larger that Gouger had to hang curtains a third of the way back in the space and put all his product right up front so the store wouldn’t look cavernous and empty. Then he began adding to his inventory, selecting nearly 180 additional products to carry. When the pandemic hit, he was allowed to remain open because he qualified as a grocery store and sold beer and wine. Unfortunately, other Premium Outlets stores didn’t get that dispensation and the entrances to the center were closed off. “And that’s when on my online business really took off,” he recalls. “I did better than if we’d been open.”
Every day during the closure, Gouger went to the store to pack the online orders that had come in the night before and mail them out. He contacted his suppliers, curious about what else they made that might be a good fit for his store. His business grew 50% during 2020, despite that he couldn’t sample his products, a sure-fire sales technique at Virginia Gourmet. Appomattox River Peanut Company’s honey-roasted peanut butter was his biggest seller during holiday season 2019, but it fell 57% during the 2020 holiday season because of not sampling. But the issue was more than numbers. “I really missed the interaction with customers,” he admits, adding, “We’re back to sampling now.”
Walking around the store allows customers to “visit” areas all over the commonwealth. Falling Bark Farm in Clarke County features a piece of bark on display, along with a framed brochure with suggested uses for the infused hickory syrups—vanilla, brandy, barrel-aged—the farm makes. Browse the shelves of MeadowCroft Farms in Swoope, a 7th-generation working family farm, and you’ll see a display showing the farmland, inn and owners, Bill and Judie Croft. Their output is extensive and, in some cases, charmingly old-fashioned, like spiced peach pickles, bread and butter pickles and sweet and hot chow chow. Hooper’s pasta sauces are made in Martinsville and come in mouthwatering options such as tomato/basil, FraDiavolo, marinara and vodka cream sauce.
Virginia Gourmet’s best seller, especially at the holidays, is the private label petite country hams that are cured on a family farm north of Charlottesville. “We sold 500 of them in the last quarter of 2019 and 1,100 last year, though we could have sold 300 more,” Gouger recalls. “I’m not sure how many to order for this year, but I know I don’t want to be caught short.” Not all the inventory is edible. Cutting boards from Granite Creations out of Virginia Beach have been wildly popular, with 100 boards made of recycled granite going out the door in the final quarter of 2020 alone.
Why so much interest in Virginia-made products? Gouger attributes it to people being far more committed to buying local than they once were. Greater interest in eating all-natural products also drives customers to his store. “Then there’s the giftability of what I carry,” he says. “I have more products under $10 than any store in the Premium Outlets. And some people come back saying that they tried something I recommended, and it was so good they want more.”
Having a staff made up of four women he’s known his entire life also helps the bottom line. “They’re all retired, and there’s the trust factor,” he says. “They do a wonderful job and I encourage them to let our customers sample everything.” He’s learned that customers appreciate that they can decide by tasting.
After four years in business, Gouger is happy with the big picture. “I’m a small business supporting other small businesses,” he asserts. “I have the best possible job because I get to interact with customers from all over and interact with suppliers, who are everyday, down-to-earth people who have a passion and talent. I’m not sure which I like best.”
