Jan. 21—TUPELO — After struggling to find local stores that sold the kinds of healthy food they were craving, friends Eleshia McCarthy and Kate Underwood decided to just open one themselves.
Last October, they opened The Garden Bar on West Main Street, focusing on gluten-free and vegan products.
“When I moved here two years ago, there weren’t many options at the time,” McCarthy said. “I met Kate, and we hit it off right away, and we decided to do this together.”
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The Garden Bar is currently open from 6:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. The Garden Bar is looking to expand hours into Sunday during the spring and summer, as well as extending hours the other days of the week.
The Garden Bar features smoothies; bowls made with a customer’s choice of a smoothie base, two fruits, granola, hemp heart and honey; teas; parfaits made from Greek or almond yogurt; bagels; treats like pies, cookies, muffins, donuts and loafs; and hot drinks like coffee, hot apple cider and hot chocolate.
“We started researching a bunch of different ingredients and things we wanted to avoid,” McCarthy said. “It then spiraled into an obsession to create a different type of product.”
For Underwood, she had another reason to eat healthier.
“I’ve got a little daughter, and I wanted to make better life choices, and question more ingredients,” she said.
Over time, their menu has evolved, developing as its owners discover what combinations work best. They opened with a larger menu but pared it down to make it more manageable. And it was necessary since they make everything fresh to order, and the bulk of the work falls on their shoulders.
“We have a little something for everybody,” McCarthy said. “We’re really known for our bowls, and the parfaits have become really popular.”
The business partners research which ingredients to buy and where to find them. Once they’ve found a company that sells the quality of ingredients they like, they’ll develop their own products from them.
Everything sold inside the store is all natural, with no sugar added. The fruit is 95% organic, but they hope to make that 100% this year. They also plan to buy more local products.
“We only use real fruit, and there’s no puree in this building, except the closest thing will be dragon fruit that we have sourced,” McCarthy said. “So we try to keep things with the least amount of ingredients.”
At the moment, customers’ favorites are the dragon smoothie, the dragon fruit bowl and the strawberries and cream smoothie.
Taylor Keyes is one of The Garden Bar’s regular customers. It didn’t take her long to a find some favorite menu items, and she’s quick to recommend them.
“Usually, I’ll grab the guava punch tea and a regular dragon bowl,” she said. “I love their bowls. The dragon bowl has the cinnamon toast crunch granola. It’s hard to find a good little spot like this, plus it’s close to where I live and I don’t have to drive to the other side of town.”
Underwood and McCarthy have plans to introduce a lunch menu, along with other item they prefer to keep under wraps for now.
But they do have hopes to expand the business. Tupelo is a test market for The Garden Bar, and if it continues to do well, there could be opportunities to open other locations.
“We’ve already expanded our menu,” Underwood said, noting that the smoothies, bowls and parfaits made up the first menu, and they added the other items since.
The Garden Bar shares space with another business, Thunderdome Tabletop, a comic book, trading card and board games store on the other half of the building owned by McCarthy’s husband.
Underwood and McCarthy would like to move into a bigger space with more seating, a drive-thru and more parking. There are only a few parking spaces in front of the building, but there’s more space behind the building.
“When we’re busy sometimes, people think there’s nowhere to park but we remind them there’s a parking lot in the back,” Underwood said.
For customers who want to try their hands at making healthy recipes at home, all the ingredients The Garden Bar uses can be found on the shelves of the store.
The owners plan to add local products like soaps and candles to the lineup soon.
“We want to bring in items that you really can’t find elsewhere,” McCarthy said. “And if there’s something that a customer wants, we can stock it for them.”