Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to BRIANNA HUMPHREY. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

BRIANNA, appreciate you joining us today. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business

The last 8 and a half years have been an absolutely crazy ride, there are so many stories. I will start off by saying that we have been robbed/broken into 19 times, we have been the subject of a crime stoppers investigation, we have been in a moderate speed car chase, won 16 awards for all sorts of this from tourism, marketing, humanitarian, and food and everything in between. One time we threw a 3 day food and music festival and shut down the downtown of our city for it and no one really came, haha, it was the most expensive staff party i have ever thrown. One time we even did a 5 episode weed cooking class that never saw the light of day. When i saw this questions i messaged some of my old staff and oldest staff and i got some great ones back. They reminded me of some great other ones like the neighbors having to come talk to us about the orgies happening in the alleyway behind our restaurant, a drug drop and p/u started out of the ceiling of our bathroom, or that time that one guy kept pooping in his hand and throwing it on the roof.
But really i think everyone’s is our yearly Naked Gardening Day photo’s that have graced social media and print for the past 9 years.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

No one saw me becoming a farmer and then a Chef/Restaurant Owner. I went to school for art and specialized in sculpting and print making with honestly no general idea how i was going to use that in real life. I knew i could bake and i was willing to work for free so i asked around and started working in a bakery as an apprentice and did that for about 5 months until i started to become more and more ill, i moved bakeries to a cake decorator but yes again started to become more and more ill. I ended up contracting an anti biotic resistant strain of C Difficile, which if you don’t know what that is, it just sucks…most people get better or die and typically don’t just exist. I however just existed for a little over a year and a half, unfortunately i was still very sick and was finally diagnosed with being a Celiac, which means i am unable to ingest Wheat, barley or rye. So being a baker was pretty much a crap shoot. I ended up with a wrecked body and a long recovery so i decided to start growing some of my own food cause i was broke and i had a lot of land and i needed to mentally recover from the past 2 years of effectively being in quarantine in my house half dead.
My first year was horrible, i grew like 565 tomato plants and i probably got like 5 tomatoes. So i decided to go work on farms for free to learn how to grow food better and i did that and spent the winter reading and then tried again and grew so much i had to go to market.
Then i turned a profit….
So the following year i hired my first employee and doubled my growing area, then tripled and so on. I discovered that heading to the farmers markets was not bringing in enough revenue so I needed another revenue stream so i had the idea to open an online farmers market that delivered to your door and i think it was a bit ahead of it’s time.
The online market did alright but it was missing something so we surveyed our customers for the entire winter and discovered that they were looking for more prepared meals or half prepared things as most of my community is used to purchasing from conventional sources.
So I looked into prep kitchens and incubator kitchens and i happen to have come across our current building in a rain storm met the realtor about 15min later and bought it right there cash and carry and they gave me the keys on the monday. I opened 2 weeks later to a line up down the block and insanity just ensued.
We now have a take out/delivery restaurant, specialty bakery, catering, and organic mushroom farm.
Our story is very rich and insane and full of tenacity and grit.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think our ability to offer interesting high quality food made with fresh local ingredients and great customer service are honestly our winning ticket. I always think that if you have great food they will return, so if you can maintain that you will be able to retain customers and grow your business. We also did a lot of events that we either attended or created. Like music festivals and other community events as well as throwing our own stuff like Bacon fest, Dinner in White and our super secret supper clubs. We have also garnered a rather interesting reputation from our Naked Gardening Day photo’s and a good amount of acclaim from them.
The 16 awards and the fan fare and media coverage from that have been awesome.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

The best thing i can say for this is pay your people well and treat them with respect and they will stay. Specially in the restaurant industry employee turnover is a serious issue and typically there are no benefits or leg up in this industry so we do our best to pay well, give benefits and wellness programs and understand that it’s easy to burn out so be mindful of peoples workloads and work weeks and have conversations with them regularly about how their workload is feeling. Opening up the floor to meaningful conversations about their employment and how things are going for each individual person and trying to tailor their job so it works best for them and for you keep a high moral and a low turn over.

Contact Info:

• Website: Radicalgardens.com
• Instagram: radical_gardens
• Facebook: Radical Gardens
• Linkedin: Brianna Humphrey

Image Credits
All images were taken by Myself (Brianna Humphrey) and Steve McIntosh