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

Nathalie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Growing up in Santa Rosa Beach (30A), FL I came from a very business-driven family. My dad, Jorge, who is my business partner had several local businesses in our area from a four-star restaurant to a large painting company. I learned at a very young age how to have a business mindset and that being a business owner was a form of having freedom. My background and passion lie in Public Relations and I truly learned to love my craft from my alma mater, The Unviserty of Mississippi (Hotty Toddy). My career started in Memphis, TN where I worked at a boutique PR firm, from there I wanted to shift gears and write so I went on to be an editorial assistant for a well-known magazine. But my most prideful job, which I consider myself lucky to have had the experience to learn and grow was working as a senior marketing coordinator for ALSAC/St. Jude – the charity arm of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I was truly blessed to have had the privilege of working on some amazing campaigns with corporate donors and forming relationships with influential individuals we love to watch on tv or listen to on the radio.

But if you know me, you know I cannot just have a job and come home to do nothing, I always have to have a side project or a side hustle, so in September of 2019 I started my side hustle, Lifestyles Journey – because everything worth having in life in order to create or manifest your unique lifestyle is a journey. Lifestyle Journey was my baby that started as an outlet to help local business owners in Memphis grow their businesses by having a unique marketing approach that is tailored to their business niche. We started out by simply doing social media marketing to having a full in-house marketing menu from branding and web design, to news/calendar releases, and digital and print offerings. But like most good things, they only last for a short period of time before a global pandemic hits. I was in the process of closing the largest deal I could have ever prayed for with a company that had over 650 franchise locations in the US when the first case of Covid-19 was announced in California. A long-lived and very emotional dream of mine along with all the hours of hard work and effort just seemed to vanish overnight, because what happens when the world crumbles and a global pandemic hits? One’s marketing budget for local and small business owners vanishes.

But with change, we humans must adapt and grow so that we can become the best version of ourselves. Taking what seems like an eternity to figure out what I was to do with myself and my business, my now-future mother-in-law always reminded me that I had a knack for creating delicous and beautiful food. That is when I had my “ah-ha” moment or ratatouille moment as some of our customers say when they try our delicious pairings and see all of the different pairing profiles we create for the first time. So immediately I spoke to my dad and told him that I had this genius and brilliant idea for a business concept, but that I did not want to do it in Memphis, I wanted to go home to 30A and explore its potential. He said that if I were to lay out the business concept and if he liked it, he would partner with me. But like did he not know what I was previously doing for a living? Long story short, I crushed the branding pitch, and here we are today. But our story isn’t over quite yet.

Blue Magnolia for me started in August 2020 as another creative outlet, something I thought would just be a side hustle until Covid was over and everything would get back to normal from a marketing standpoint. At first, I created the business concept I marketed as I would for any of my clients giving it the best push forward on social media, never expecting someone to purchase something from us within 48 hours of posting our business. I guess I was really good at marketing lol.
At that moment, I felt a rush of excitement, something that I posted someone just bought, so here we are, we’re doing this thing. I get in my car and drive 7.5 hours home to fulfill our very first order. But the funny part is that our orders never stopped coming in, they would grow larger so for the first 6 months of Blue Magnolia I was commuting every week, twice a week to fulfill our orders until I could not do it anymore and I moved back home to 30A to continue to grow it.

Blue Magnolia has been the biggest blessing of my life despite all the first-year meltdowns and growing pains. It truly has become something much larger than I could have imagined and I attribute our success to this point as a direct derivative of love and dedication.

What most people did not know until recently after a rebrand is that our business is named after our pup who showed us, unconditional love, until his very last second on this Earth, he is the Blue. Magnolia, for all the growth I had over the years in Oxford, MS, and in Memphis, TN.

Nathalie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Our business’s bread and butter is our many charcuterie boards, from traditional charcuterie to breakfast, appetizer, and dessert boards. But that is not just what we do, we have several different meal boards from sandwiches to sizzling fajita boards, and in-home dining experiences with several delicious menus.

We also provide different services from afternoon tea, in-kitchen classes, and monthly workshops where we partner with a local business for a class offering such as a cocktail-making class, pasta class, floral arrangement class, or an upscale sip and paint class.

We take pride in being extremely flexible within reason of our business and giving our customers a uniquely delicous and beautiful experience from the moment they receive a board or box to when they come to our space for a class or workshop.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I think what has helped us build a reputation with our customers the way that we have over these years has been our:

1. Attention to detail during the ordering processing. We repeat to our customers their order three times making sure that everything is correct.

2. During our fulfillment process we make sure that each order before it gets wrapped or boxed up meets our presentation standard and that every product has the quality we are known to have. and our delivery process.

3. Communication style, and being fully transparent which each customer. Most of our customers are not local, they are traveling to 30A, Destin, Miramar Beach, and Panama City Beach so we want to make sure they feel extremely comfortable and trust us to have their food ready and delivered by the time they arrive or need it for. We constantly are communicating with our customers from delivery a courtesy text message when our driver is on his or her way, or a courtesy reminder of a catering event they are having in the next 24 hours.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Ever since I was young I believed that in order to start a business you had to have lots of capital, money in the bank, or an investor to back you and your business up financially. The reality of it is you don’t – not when you are selling a service.

When we first started Blue Magnolia it was in the middle of Covid-19 banks were giving loans to existing businesses but now new businesses, and during that time money for us, was very tight. In fact, my marketing agency was barely breaking even since everyone decided to not renew their contract or could not pay their monthly retainer, that’s how this side hustle of Blue Magnolia was created.

Part of my branding strategy was that if Blue Magnolia was going to work we were going to use the money from the first few orders to buy their boards, cheeses, meats, pairings, wrapping, etc., and the remaining amount left would be our profit. That is how was started our business, by using the customers’ money to purchase their supplies. Fast forward to today, we no longer need to do that and have much larger inventory days.

Never tell yourself that in order to start a business, you have to have capital in the bank, because again, while you’re starting your profits may be low, but your customers will cover their own supply in the pricing you give them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bluemagnoliacatering.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.bluemagnolia/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebluemagnoliacatering
• Other: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/thebluemagnolia30a/

Image Credits
Yes we do. Logo: LV Design Co. Headshot: Teresa Daniel Photography