Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

A kitchen fire caused Trava Barnett to take her cafe food on the road with a hot dog cart.

Chris Hart faced a demand so high Cafe Racer had to move to online ordering. 

The lack of foot traffic during the pandemic led Community Cigar owner Glynn Segars to do sales through a newly built website. 

Bloodroot Blades needed to reach a much wider audience with its custom knives, so it turned to email newsletters. 

Meanwhile, sustainability and subscriptions have transformed one family-owned flower farm.

Oglethorpe County is known for agriculture; as of 2022, it’s ranked in the top 15% of cattle producing counties in Georgia. But it’s also home to a variety of local businesses that have found success in nontraditional ways.

Many of these businesses chose Oglethorpe County because of its relaxed regulations, lower taxes, affordable rent and community tone.  

And although they have found success, entrepreneurs have also been limited.

“There is a part of the board of commissioners that don’t want to see our county changed at all,” said Fred Gretsch, owner of G Brand BBQ in downtown Lexington. “So, there’s people saying ‘stay away, stay away.’ But then, there are those of us who thrive on more people in the county, and we want proper growth.” 

This led local business owners to unconventional methods for that growth, adapting tactics to create different revenue streams.

Companies such as Community Cigar, Trava’s Dog Gone Good Cafe, Cafe Racer, Bloodroot Blades and 3 Porch Farm are all examples of county business that moved beyond a traditional brick-and-mortar store to find expansion and success online or outside of the county’s borders. 

Dog Gone Good luck

Trava Barnett, owner of Trava’s Dog Gone Good Cafe and Food Cart, pivoted the business from a permanent location in Oak Tree Plaza in Lexington to a hot dog cart open late in downtown Athens. 

The reason? Staffing issues and a kitchen fire that destroyed half of the restaurant. 

“Big dreams, but no people,” said Barnett, who said finding employees has been her biggest challenge as a business owner. 

Paul Maddox is an Oglethorpe County cattleman and a part-time employee of Barnett’s since last September. He expressed the same concerns.

“It’s just hard finding anybody to work,” he said. “You put an ad out? Nobody answers.”

Persevering through staffing issues and cafe damage, Barnett said she’s found success with the mobile stand, which has allowed her to open up the doors to the cafe once again, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. 

Although opening the cafe during the week was always on the agenda, Barnett claims the fire actually helped. It allowed her to pursue her original passion of food vending and keep her business afloat while doing it. 

“I tell people all the time, I can make more at the stand downtown in one night than I could at the restaurant in the week,” Barnett said. 

Barnett’s success with the stand has come at a cost. 

Barnett, who prides herself on being an early bird, has been forced to work until 2 a.m. every night on the weekends. Her presence at the stand is a result of past employee theft and the high demand from college students, she said.

Even with having to run both the stand and the cafe, Barnett has no plans of retreating to a traditional business model.

“We pride ourselves on having very friendly service. People always say that,” Barnett said. “I love those college students downtown, and I think they love us too. I have a lot of ideas for the future.”

From rural business to city customers

Much has changed at Cafe Racer since owner Chris Hart started his business in a trailer at the intersection of Arnoldsville Road and Highway 78 in 2018. 

One of the key contributors to his success has been becoming the “worst-kept secret in Greek life,” Hart said.

During the pandemic and after reopening his cafe, he maintained his Crawford-based business with online vending, which led to a food truck and now a pending second location in Athens.

Cafe Racer’s food truck, which began operating in 2021, has been helpful for continued catering requests while Hart works to open his second location on West Broad Street in Athens. The truck sells food at popular spots, including Creature Comforts, Terrapin Brewing Co. and the Athens Farmers Market.

Hart also said online ordering has been good for keeping track of customer orders when demand increased dramatically after reopening in 2021. The original location saw hours-long lines, and people weren’t sure if they would get what they ordered.

“We had to start selling our food online, so people could know if they were getting food or not,” Hart said. “That was the original reason we did online sales.” 

With a physical presence in a more populated area, Cafe Racer could better maintain consistent profits that freed the company to establish itself in a “natural, authentic way,” he said. 

Hart admitted that he doesn’t prefer digital marketing and finds it burdensome to manage. Instead, the cafe gained a larger customer base by operating at strategically high-traffic locations in Athens. 

Finding success in community

Similar to Hart, Glynn Segars took advantage of online sales and marketing to not only keep his business afloat, but also expand it. 

Segars, owner and President of Community Cigar, opened his store in downtown Lexington with an intense interest in tobacco and people. His First Friday events, which feature new products and a time for customers to gather, allow him to combine his two passions.

But long before this — and even before he could open in 2020 — Segars was forced to pivot into an e-commerce business due to COVID-19. 

Community Cigar wasn’t alone. According to a study done in June 2020 by the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 63% of businesses changed how they served customers due to the pandemic and 41% switched to online sales.

With few cigar businesses selling online at the time, Segars offered free shipping on online orders. 

“We offered free delivery, and people were calling in orders, and that's when we knew we really needed a website,” Segars said.

Although he didn’t know how to build a website, Segars knew it was needed.

“We somehow managed to have a website (communitycigar.com) up and running 48 hours later,” he said.

The online sales helped keep his business alive, but Segars said he also believes he was able to capture the attention of the local customer base. 

After The Cigar Shop in Athens closed in January 2020, the area was left without a cigar lounge, so Segars worked to attract customers with the website, and then was able to bring them into the store with First Fridays. 

“In 2020, online sales were over 80% of our gross sales, and ever since then, that percentage has gone down, and today it's about 50% online and 50% in-store,” Segars said. 

Segars’ success has also allowed him to make the store much more than a cigar lounge, offering men’s grooming supplies, its own roasted coffee, Coca-Cola products and hand-crafted knives. 

Unconventional lottery sales model

Bloodroot Blades, a custom knife company owned by David and Katy Van Wyk in Arnoldsville has thrived with its fully online business model. 

In the past five years, Bloodroot Blades has built a high demand mostly through digital transactions. It’s so great, there’s a 52-month waiting list for Bloodroot Blades’ custom knives, which include kitchen, butcher and hunting knives. 

Every subscriber of their newsletter has a chance to enter a lottery, and the winner can purchase whichever knives are for sale that month.

“Between 30 and 40 knives are typically up on that lottery sale,” said Luke Snyder, shop apprentice. “We get to see how many people put their name in the hat for which knives. Between 30 and 200 people will sign up for each knife.” 

The Van Wyks and Snyder partially attribute their success to having creative enterprise over their craft and the freedom to choose which custom orders they want to make, especially during the pandemic.

“We were able to be flexible with our order list,” Katy said.

The company has maintained a sufficient backstock of materials, so it doesn't have shortage issues. It sources materials from friends who live out of state.

“We keep a lot of our supplies on hand,” David said. “We were somewhat affected (by the pandemic), but not production-wise.”

David said he believes that if Bloodroot Blades’ knives were limited in variety, they would have struggled during quarantine.

“Because we were diverse and because we were small, we were in the pod together,” he said. “It would've been a lot harder with 10 or 15 employees to keep the pipeline moving.”

Bloodroot Blades adapts to client needs while maintaining creative interest in their craft so as not to fall into a production rut, which may be a key to its demand.

“We essentially learned from just saying yes to things and figuring out how to do it,” Snyder said.

Shipping flowers from home

Not only has 3 Porch Farm been successful online, the owners have altered their business model to reduce environmental impact by using shipping and a subscription service.

“Shipping is what made us viable and truly sustainable as a business,” said Steve O’Shea, who co-owns the company with his wife, Mandy.

3 Porch Farm has six employees in addition to its owners. During the lockdown, their staff was at home. 

Realizing they couldn’t fill in for that many employees, Steve and Mandy set to work transitioning their business model from in-person markets, weddings and wholesale routes to a shipping-only business.

Mandy reconfigured the website from her parents’ house, while Steve continued running the farm, packing and shipping orders.

“Fortunately, we made it work,” Steve said.

They now run 85% of their business online with 12,000 email subscribers, reaching customers from Atlanta, Marietta and Athens, but keeping the headquarters in Comer.

Their subscription service began last fall and found “overwhelming success.”

“The biggest benefit of a subscription to us is the security of knowing we have a home for our flowers without having to flood the internet with advertisements. We don't have to hustle as hard to market them,” Steve said.

The farm’s physical location is open during the spring and fall, and USDA REAP grants and federal tax credits have helped finance many of their 150 solar panels. 

The O’Sheas said none of this would have been possible without changing their business strategy.

“Our business model couldn't be more different now than it was in 2019, and we are happy for it,” Steve said. “It's never fun in the midst of it, but it often leaves you better off than you were before if you respond resiliently and thoughtfully.”