Staying power

Before he began selling small-batch seltzer, Keaton Presti-Stringfellow was a therapist. You can see it in the way he talks to customers. During a recent Saturday at the Franklin Farmers Market, as he was working the booth for Maypop Sparkling Water, he was doing the typical farmers market thing of chatting up passers-by. But there was a quality to his listening — the steady eye contact, the follow-up questions — that made him seem truly engaged.

I watched him make brief but legitimate connections with several people, and when I bought my own pack of assorted Maypop flavors (lemon, tangerine, lime, and grapefruit-orange), I felt the connection myself. For a few minutes, I was talking to a nice guy who happened to be a merchant. The selling seemed beside the point.

That’s half the reason to go to a farmers market, if you ask me. Yes, the food is a major draw. After experiencing the robust flavor of spinach that’s fresh from the ground, I can’t go back to the grocery store’s limp green leaves, and if you have 20 minutes, I will rhapsodize about the dark yellow yolk in a local, pasture-raised egg. But in many cases, the people selling this food make the experience of eating it even more special.

“Being able to have a conversation with somebody who you may not have anything in common with or don’t know anything about makes a farmers market feel nurturing,” Presti-Stringfellow told me, when we sat down at The Village Pub, an East Nashville spot with Maypop on the menu. “That’s true for our customers as well as for me. When you can be attentive to someone, it establishes real trust.”

I’ve been in Nashville six months now, and thanks to regular farmers market visits — both the one in Franklin and the Nashville Farmers Market on Rosa L. Parks Boulevard — I’ve met several people that I genuinely like, even if we only speak for a few minutes a week. I reached out to interview some of them because our quick chats convinced me they had fascinating stories to tell.

I was especially interested to learn that everyone I spoke to is at a different stage in their farmers market life cycle. These vendors’ relationships to both their booths and their customers helped me see the entire ecosystem more clearly.

Maypop

Take Maypop, which is both a beverage business and an example of what a lifelong friendship can create. It was founded in 2019 by Matt Herrick, who spent almost a decade in Nashville working with craft beer distributors. One day he was holding a can of Spindrift, a national brand known for blending sparkling water with real fruit juice, and realized he could do something similar on an intentionally smaller scale.

“I wanted to make something in small batches, using fresh fruit juice and not anything frozen or from concentrate,” he told me. “I wanted to start from the ground up with farmers markets and local purveyors.”

Thanks to his time in the craft beer game, Herrick had the relationships to get the business started, but it was his relationship with Presti-Stringfellow, a college buddy from Indiana University, that really helped it thrive.

By 2021 both men had gone through divorces and were helping each other through the aftermath — each had been the other’s best man — when Herrick asked his friend to move to Nashville and join Maypop as co-CEO. (Presti-Stringfellow also had experience in beverage sales, along with his work as a therapist). Needing something positive and constructive to focus on, they hurled themselves into sparkling water.

“It was our lifeline,” Herrick said.

The men are currently roommates as well as friends and business partners, and it energizes them. “We have really dialed-in communication,” Presti-Stringfellow said. “We have a really copacetic environment, which is how we’ve gotten to this point.”

By “this point,” he’s means Maypop’s remarkable growth.

While they will continue to self-distribute to dozens of local clients, Herrick and Presti-Stringfellow recently signed on with beverage wholesaler Best Brands to get their water statewide. Still, they insist that farmers markets will always be part of their business plan.

They’re at both the Franklin Farmers Market and the Richland Park Farmers Market every Saturday. They swap out who goes to which location each week, and they don’t take weeks off.

“I don’t think we’ll ever back away from them,” Herrick told me. “For one thing, it’s 30% of our business right now. Even if that number does change with the importance of wholesale, it’s important to both of us to maintain our presence with the friends we’ve made there.”

As he talked about his regulars, Herrick got visibly emotional, especially when he described a customer having a bad day. He was able to come out from behind the booth and talk to her, which is just not something a CEO can do when someone buys a soda at a restaurant or a convenience store.

BB’s Gourmet Pretzels

Brenda Sadler-Waters is equally committed to this way of life.

Back in 2007 she launched BB’s Gourmet Pretzels by selling in farmers markets, and all these years later, that’s the only place you can find her. (The one exception is the sustainable consumer packaging company where her nephew works. He takes orders from his co-workers at the holidays.)

“Early in our game, I had them in three liquor stores and a deli and a health food store,” Sadler-Waters told me over the phone. “But it was just too much pressure. To me, being in these two farmers markets [Nashville and Franklin] is what lets me do what I love. I enjoy preparing food, of course, but I love what I do because I get to meet people.”

None of this was in her plan. In her previous life, she had a career in clerical work and enjoyed cooking at home. Then one New Year’s Eve, she realized she needed an extra snack to serve at a party. A friend staying with her had another friend’s recipe for garlic pretzels, so they made a batch. The guests loved them.

Sadler-Waters got permission to use that recipe herself, and after tweaking it to make it her own, she started making pretzels for family and friends.

“I sent them to my sister’s work with her for several years, and every year, people would ask, ‘Where are my pretzels?’ And I thought, ‘Well, if people are asking for them, maybe people will buy them.’”

By 2012, Sadler-Waters quit her clerical work and made pretzels her full-time job, running the business with her husband, Ricky Waters. She offers four flavors: garlic, lemon pepper and “delicate heat,” plus a sweet pretzel dusted with cinnamon and confectioner’s sugar, named “CC’s Smudges,” after a great-niece who suggested adding the cinnamon.

The pretzels are small and crunchy. The seasonings are uniformly strong, so that you always get a mouthful of flavor. Speaking from personal experience, I can report that the lemon pepper seasoning flips a switch in the brain that makes you eat half a bag without even thinking about it.

“I had no idea that it would get to this point,” Sadler-Waters said. “I felt like it was just a hobby, and eventually, I would get over it. But anytime I’ve ever mentioned shutting it down, I get the thumbs down. So I’m continuing on with it.”

John Reed’s Welsh cakes

But for every farmers market lifer, there’s someone else who must move on. So it goes for John Reed. He got a culinary education in his native Wales, then came to America for a relationship that didn’t work out. In 2022 a friend encouraged him to come to Nashville, and before long he was selling baked goods at farmers markets. From the beginning, his Welsh cakes clicked.

Similar to a pancake, but slightly thicker and much more buttery, they’ve become part of my breakfast routine, especially the strawberry variety (There are several other flavors, including chocolate, raisin, and orange-rosemary.)

“I was grateful people enjoyed them, and I love being able to connect with the people who buy them,” he told me.

That’s been especially important after he saw a dip in subscribers to his Twitch channel, where he had been livestreaming himself making meals. “I did that for about six or seven years, and I was able to do it full-time until that platform dipped. Then it was time to do something else. My friend I was living with [in 2022] suggested farmers markets, which worked out at the right moment.”

Reed still Twitches on Mondays, where he often streams himself making enormous batches of Welsh cakes, and he’s still at the Nashville Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. However, he and his girlfriend are expecting a baby this summer. To prepare, he’s picked up a job at the Chewy Fulfillment Center in Mt. Juliet, and he’s studying to become an electrician.

“With my family growing, I’ve got to have something stable,” he told me.

And so he’s counting down his farmers market Saturdays. Once the baby comes, the entire operation will be put on hold. “I hope in a few years, I can come back and bring my son with me,” he said.

Personally, I hope I’m around to witness Reed’s return. That’s not only because I will miss the Welsh cakes—though I certainly will—but also because I want to be part of a community that’s sturdy enough to welcome people whenever and however they are able to arrive.