The End of an Era: The Farmers Table Era

In August of 2011 Joel and I took our first trip together to California. This trip is really where our Farmers Table story begins. We fell in love with the food and the concept of serving a meal that was 100% locally grown and sourced. This was such a foreign concept at the time in our little small town of Spartanburg, SC. I had a background in culinary arts and we had both worked in restaurants for several years in various positions. We had this crazy notion that if anyone was going to open a restaurant with this concept and execute it well then it was going to be us! Man were we young and out of our minds!

So in February of 2012, with the backing and support of our families, just 7 months after we started dating we took a huge leap of faith and opened the Farmers Table. We had absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into. I mean we thought we would just be opening up a little breakfast and sandwich shop that would maybe serve a handful of people each day. Instead the community embraced us with open arms packing the 99 seat restaurant out from open to close 7 days a week. This quickly turned into 16+ hour work days for us. We were determined to make this dream a success though and poured 100% of ourselves into our business.

For the first few years we were open it was nonstop chaos. Trying to navigate food orders, guest satisfaction, quality control, employee management, marketing, equipment needs and so much more. It seemed that every day we were open we faced new and unexpected issues. Issues with the building maintenance, employee issues such as theft, unreliable staff and staff changes, along with break-ins, floods and guest complaints. The list just goes on and on.

Through all of this Joel and I remained a steadfast team, not without our ups and downs, but we were dedicated to the success of this restaurant. It had become a place that people knew and loved. Regular guests would frequent our bar top and tables on a weekly basis. We became a staple location for church goers after Sunday service or college students for a late Saturday morning brunch. Joel was more of the people person being the face of the restaurant and interacting with the guests while I worked on the creative side with menu design and managing the kitchen. It was because of these people who loved us and what we were doing that we continued to pour ourselves into it.

Within the first 5 years we expanded our business to providing sustainable school meals in a local preschool and a local college. We also purchased a food truck after watching the movie Chef because why not add another thing onto our plates! Yet still keep pushing because the business is a success and from a business standpoint we were thriving. In 2018 we left our original location and moved into downtown Spartanburg in a renovated space that was three times the size of our original location. We expanded our menu offerings and were able to offer a space for private events to our guests.

While the business was thriving our personal life became more and more chaotic. Within those first 6 years we had welcomed two small children into our family. We now had a 3 year old and a 1 year old to manage on top of our doubled employee roster and every growing list of restaurant issues. To be a restaurant owner truly means that you are “working” 24/7. You can never turn it off and there is no one above you that can help when you are overwhelmed. When you take a vacation, you are never fully on vacation because of the constant check-ins and managing from afar that has to be done. When there is a holiday you are never off to enjoy it with your family because you are open and there to serve other families. When you have a baby the business does not shut down to allow you time to recover, you just have to get back up and go back to work with a baby strapped to you while you greet guests and serve food. Somehow together Joel and I made this all work, although most of the credit should go to our amazing families and the love and support they gave us every single day!

Then we come to March 2020, the beginning of the end of our dream. Our world came to a screeching halt with zero notice when the pandemic shut our doors. Immediately we had to lay off almost all 40 of our employees because businesses were not allowed to operate. We had thousands of dollars worth of prepped food in our walk in and no guests to serve it to. Only because of Joel’s genius idea to buy a food truck, which up until this point had been more of a hindrance than a money maker, did we have a way to bring in income. For almost two months Joel and a staff of 2 people, one being my brother who worked for free, prepped and sold food off of the food truck to keep us a float. They drove to neighborhoods, businesses and community spots to have sometimes 3 services a day, 7 days a week! The food truck is only a cooking vessel on wheels so everything had to be prepped at the restaurant, loaded onto the truck, driven to the location, cooked and prepared, then driven back to the restaurant, unloaded and both the truck and restaurant cleaned. Needless to say Joel was away from home almost all the time, he barely saw the kids or me and was running on fumes most days. He was doing what he had to do for our family though.

While all this was going on I was home with our children and experiencing something so magical and different from our everyday lives. I was learning what it was like to actually get a chance to see our kids growing up instead of spending my days in the restaurant barely seeing them.

When the closing mandate was lifted and businesses were able to reopen, none of our employees wanted to return to work. They were all receiving stipend checks from the government or moved onto new jobs or did not have childcare for their own families because schools were shut down. We tried to place ads to hire new staff but no one wanted to return to work, so we remained closed. Without the staff that we needed it was impossible to reopen. We continued to try and service the community through our food truck, but once the rest of the restaurants in town had reopened no one had an interest to eat off the food truck anymore.

Just before the pandemic happened we had signed a contract to take over the food service at a private school in Spartanburg. So when August rolled around and we still had a staff of less than 5 people and the inability to reopen we shifted our focus to servicing the school. Then with Joel home with us, our kids in a nurtured and safe space and us having so much time together as a family we truly had to evaluate what was more important in our lives.

We decided to give it a year and see what happened within the world and the economy, continue to try and retain employees to reopen and continue with all the hard work we had put in. This aspiration was so short lived as the pandemic’s ripple effects were massive. Food prices skyrocketed, particularly with paper products, meats and dairy. Food shortages started happening and products were unavailable. Deliveries were unreliable and we never knew if we would actually receive the products we ordered or not. Food quality went down and products were being recalled. The constant struggle just to maintain product consumed our days. Unfortunately this would become the new normal in the food industry. A ripple effect that we sometimes still feel almost 4 years later.

In October of 2021 we finally had to let our dream go. The pandemic had killed us and we were never able to recover. However what we realized is that maybe we had a new dream and that was our family. Something that we didn’t have when we first opened the Farmers Table. Back then it was just me and Joel, but then Solomon and Leanna came along and we had to decide what was best for all of us. As hard as it was we knew that this was the right decision for us.

It has been over 2 years since we closed down permanently and almost 4 years since we served our last guest inside the restaurant. There is still not a week that goes by that someone doesn’t ask us when we might reopen, or mention how much they miss their favorite menu item or say how much they wish they could visit their favorite brunch spot. We are so appreciative of the love and support the community showed us for so many years. Truly we will never take that for granted, but now we are living our new dream and it honestly may be the best dream come true we could have ever imagined. Seeing the happiness in our children’s faces everyday just from us spending time with them is the most magical feeling in the world.

We miss you Spartanburg and we will never forget what you did for us! It is the end of an era, the Farmers Table Era.