Gotham Gal

Nestio shakes it up

2013-06-19T09:47:50-04:00

I met the entrepreneur and team behind Nestio at Techstars about two years ago. I liked the team immediately although was not totally sold on the concept. I became a mentor to the team. I eventually invested in them too.

They began as a site with a consumer product for the renters market. It was all about using technology to make the process easier. Think of it as you own a fantastic excel sheet on all the apartments that you were looking at to rent with pertinent information to the neighborhood.

The feedback from the market was that many of the listings were inaccurate. So they dove deep to figure out why. The reason was pretty clear. Listings were managed by landlords and brokers with technology delegated to a stick-it note. Nothing was up to date and in turn nothing ended up being entirely accurate.

That is when Nestio started to rethink their model. They began to build a system for an archaic outdated system that would bring modern, centralized technology to the rental industry.

The team spent thousands of hours with landlords and brokers to understand the industry and through this they were able to pinpoint the problem. They realized that everyone that they spoke with appreciated technology but there was just not a modern solution for their business. A perfect example is Caren Maio, the entrepreneur behind the business, met with a landlord who had his Macbook air in one hand and his Ipad in the other. He tells Caren that in order to track his buildings and listings he uses a whiteboard and a fax machine in his office. This was in 2012. He could not figure out how to apply technology to his business. That is the void in the marketplace that Nestio has fixed and filled.

Nestio has built a platform that gives landlords and brokers real time information. That information also provides data for them to be more profitable and manage their business easier. How do you really know that your business is transforming an industry? When every owner and agency starts to use the product, when you walk into an office and see Nestio up on every computer, and when every owner and President of an agency whispers in your ear after integrating the product into their day to day business and leans in to ask "Are you raising any money because I'd love to invest".

Slow money

2013-06-18T07:01:31-04:00

There is something to be said for slow money. What do I mean by that? I am involved in a lot of companies that honestly do not need millions of dollars to get them to the next level. They need a nice shot of cash like $1/1.5m to get them to the point where they are creating revenues and building engagement. Sometimes too much cash at the wrong time can lead someone down the wrong path.

It is easy to forget how hard it is to build a company and how long it takes. Throwing money at a business is not the end all be all. There are steps. Building a foundation is essential. Being strategic about what roles need to be filled, what the model is going to look like, what the product will be and how money is going to be made. That does not mean hiring a bunch of people at once because an endless stream of cash has been brought into the company. Businesses do not grow over night. They take time and patience. Sometimes it takes a little longer than you think and other times it takes off like wildfire. I believe in slow money at the beginning not just an overwhelming amount of cash that can stop an entrepreneur from forgetting how they got to the place they did in the first place, by being scrappy, smart and calculating.

In addition to the concept of slow money is what role does an entrepreneur want to play in their company. An entrepreneur asked me this past week if it was okay for them to build something but not be the CEO. Would that be ok? I actually believe that it is totally ok as long as they understand that their vision is what needs to remain in place. Understanding that if the CEO does not work out that the entrepreneur has to step back into that spot. In many ways, an entrepreneur who understands their abilities is refreshing. Someone told me that the first thing they did was hire someone who had the skill sets they did not. One entrepreneur told me that she knew she did not have the skills to necessarily build the company out but wanted to hire the right person who did. I applaud that. John Doer talked about that in his interview that I watched over the weekend and from a wise investor it is really great to hear that it is okay to realize your skill sets as an entrepreneur. Sometimes those are the best ones.

We read about companies being funded, successes that we believe happened over night, valuations that seem extreme etc. etc every day but it is the companies that have entrepreneurs who have spent time thinking of the strategy, building up the foundation slowly and intelligently are the majority of the real successes. The latest jello shot usually does not work in the long run or tossing money and increasing valuations at a brand that might have hit a ceiling or can not grab anymore marketshare. Know what you need and be smart about growth. In the long run it will be the smartest decision an entrepreneur can make.

Nicole Hamilton, Feel My Money, Woman Entrepreneur

2013-06-17T07:17:49-04:00

Nicole reached out to me through Diedre Lord, another smart woman entrepreneur. I was intrigued with what Nicole was building, an online and mobile application that brings complete transparency and clarity to consumers in the mortgage process. Like most women, she was building out a platform based on her own personal circumstances as she went about getting a mortgage. The site is called Feel My Money.

Nicole grew up in the DC area going to Sidwell Friends for high school. Both of her parents are in academics teaching English literature at University of Maryland. Nicole laughs when she says they still edit her press releases. Her Mom is a Shakespeare scholar and her father is a Milton scholar. Her mother continues to teaches at University of Maryland managing at $30m budget in her department and her father is now retired.

Nicole wanted to leave the east coast for college and go somewhere small. She went to Pitzer where she got a degree in psych-biology which is a precursor to neuroscience. During her junior year she spent 5 months in a total immersion program in Nepal. It was a Peace Corp type program learning Napalenese. She lived with a family while she was there hearing all their Hindu stories each night.

After graduating she followed a boy to NYC. Her parents assumed she would go to graduate school in neuroscience. Instead Nicole took a paid job at Columbia University working in the neuroscience department of Eric Kandel, Nobel Prize winner, to study neuro-cell generation. It was the early 90's. She also worked in the illegal drugs lab studying the effects of marijuana and cocaine on live subjects. She'd get her friends to come in and be the monitors of the project. She stayed for a year.

Nicole moved on taking another job at the University of Pennsylvania to look at fetal cell implants. It was there that she realized how political academia is. You have to publish results and decided that the world of academia was not for her. She took a job with Schick Technologies that had licensed an active pixel sensor from the laboratories out of Cal Tech. That is when they started developing digital imaging instead of film for the medical community. It was an amazing experience. Nicole considered that her 3 years there was her business school.

She began there working on a patent litigation suit against a French company. She became the main liaison with the patent office which worked directly with Merck pharmaceutial because they backed the development of the image processing. Through this she learned how corporations develop diagnostic tools to sell to the public. She managed the clinical trials and worked directly with the President of the company and the engineering department. Nicole eventually became the head of Womens Health Imaging and the first thing they looked at was an osteoporosis imaging detection system. The system would look at how the hand would correlate with the hip. The first machine was $11K for a doctors office. It was the first of its kind. Totally cutting edge stuff.

Then they began to look into momographies. Digital has a tiny percentage of radiation compared to using film. They presented the new technology to the FDA . Through that process she learned about quality control issues, selling the product, private placement etc. An incredible experience. The really interesting piece is that at the time Kodak was still only using film. Digital cameras were in the process of being developed. It is one of those moments she thinks back about now as she starts her own business. Kodak knew that they were replacing medical films with digital yet they decided to ignore it making them super late to the game.

Nicoles next journey was taking a job with the Warshaw Group. She had no other corporate experience and it was the beginnings of the dot com hey days. Warshaw made software for the Newton device to do critical data collection of the first electronic medical records. Most of their customers were engineers. She stayed one year.

Next move. Nicole landed a job as the product manager at Gateway for wireless applications. This was when the internet was just starting to be on the phone. It was already in Europe and Asia but not yet in the US. She learned about micropayments as it was a totally different industry. She had to learn the phone systems and telecom companies of each country. This was the beginning of apps on the phone too. They built a personal information management system which is essentially a contact manager. They looked at what type of apps would businesses wants to use. They got acquired in 2000. The company that bought them died a few years later.

Nicole returned to the Warshaw Group because the partners had split up and the company was going in a new direction. She now had all this experience from the telecom industry that could be applied to protocols such as the Palm and Blackberry. Slowly they began to see real adoption through the mobile workforce. There began a trajectory of mobile products. Nicole was overseeing Biz Dev, road maps and corporate development. She started to not only thinking about having her own company she started to think about having kids. She got pregnant and had her first son in 2004 and with that she only did some part time work for Warshaw on the side while she figured out her next thing.

Nicole began doing some development consulting. She got a partner who designed and fabricated business products from medical devices to furniture. It was through having her own business that she learned she could sell. The first product she sold from her company was her proudest moment. It was a check for only $2500 but she realized she could convince someone to pay her for her time and that was empowering. She did this for a few years before the recession hit, it was 2007. Too many of her customers went out of business. Her husband was an architect and his business was hit hard too. She realized she had to go back and get a real job to make some money for the family.

Nicole returned to Warshaw in 2008 as the managing director of mobile software. She applied everything she knew to this job and doubled it in tough economic times. She hired all the people, built the business and ran the division. She realized she was really good at getting from point A to point B. With all those roles and responsibilities she knew she could create her own company instead of working for someone else or just doing consultant work as she did before. She had confidence that she did not have before and she could once again afford to start her own thing. In the meantime, she had another child.

Nicole and her husband decided to buy a house in Columbia County. They figured based on their own experiences they could easily build a house. They bought land, began and then the reality set in. They had children, it wasn't easy to get up there and their jobs were not suitable for spending long stretches of time in Columbia County. They decided they needed to sell the house and they couldn't. The good news is that they did not put a lot of money into the house but money was tight. They had to refinance the house in order to stay afloat. Trying to figure out principle payments vs refinancing or selling was beyond frustrating. Nicole made spread sheets of Excel to figure out the problem. That is what she would do at work too. They would help their clients collect lots of data to analyze and visualize but it wasn't so easy to do when it came to financing a mortgage. She began to wonder if other people were having so much trouble getting transparency. That is when the idea began to form for Feel My Money.

It was two years of thinking about this and building out the business at night before she quit her job. She educated herself about the industry particularly figuring out how the revenue was going to work. When she was comfortable she jumped in full force. She found a UX developer in the financial industry to join her. She found a CTO who had worked in a mortgage company. She found an expert who had been in the mortgage industry for 25 years. Their software allows people to really understand their own personal mortgages and the decisions that they are going to make over time. Taking out a mortgage is a long term commitment and through out the life of that mortgage you might sell your house, refinance or rent and people need scenario planning. That planning could save individuals tens of thousands of dollars.

She has had a great reaction from mortgage brokers too as they can help their clients easily understand the process and the truth is it helps the brokers see a clearer picture as well. Once again a woman builds a company where she finds a void in her own life experience. Nicole is a very smart methodical woman and her career history in medical labs to telecommunications gives her the experience to be a confident smart entrepreneur.

Taxes and reality

2013-06-15T08:04:50-04:00

A few things happened when we spent time in Tennessee recently. When we went through the airport on the way out it was interesting to see how the TSA works in Knoxville.

I believe the funding from the TSA is split among each state and if you don't use the cash you don't get it. The place is chocked with TSA guards. They are more hardcore than JFK. When you check in you have to put your bag through the xray machines after they get checked in. Then they are shipped off to the plane you are taking. They have basically spent money on every possible security check there is.

Once you get to the other side, through security, there is a constant reel of someone announcing to be careful watching out for bags, etc. I am not poo-pooing security but this is a pretty small airport and I'd love to know how much of our tax dollars are going towards this. Call me crazy but I am not sure Knoxville is a hotbed for terrorism.

Here is the one thing that truly stuck with me. I went to get us some water bottles before boarding the plane. The guy in front of me was buying at USA Today. The cashier told him he did not need to stand in line and in the future he can just leave the $1 in the box by the paper-stand. The patron said that he figured that it was $1.07 or $1.15 based on the tax. The cashier said that down in Tennessee we don't tax this stuff like they tax everything in NY. The patron said he will definitely then be returning to this part of the world.

When I went to pay my wallet opened up and he saw my drivers license. He looked at me and said sorry about that I did not know you were from NY. I told him it was fine as I couldn't be happier living there and being taxed. What I really wanted to say is who do you think pays for the roads that you drove on to get to work today, who do you think is paying for all this security in the airport, who do you think is paying for many things that we all take for granted.

Living in this country and being part of the community using the Post Office or driving on the roads costs money and we all should be paying our part to pay for it. We were told when we were there that two of the major camping parks were closed due to lack of funds. BTW, so should large corporations pay their fair amont of taxes but to me his comments struck a chord with me.

Why don't we pass a job bill to rebuild our roads, rebuild our bridges, rebuild our schools etc as it will create more jobs and jobs are good for America. Jobs also pay taxes which pay for the way we live. I don't get the Americans that believe not paying taxes is a good thing and perhaps I just never will.

Blackberry Farm, last day

2013-06-14T07:19:00-04:00

We got up the last day and prepared to leave. Just a few things we had to do before we left. On the top of the list was a visit to the dogs.

Jim Sanford is the dog trainer. He spent 20 years training elephants and now trains dogs at Blackberry Farm. He works with Lagotto Romagnolo Italian truffle dogs. They can find truffles which they are now growing on the farm. One of them found a 200 lb truffle at the Oregon Truffle festival. Seriously nice man. They sell the puppies to patrons of the resort.

Emily got on the swing before we left. The swing, the views, the whole picture defines the place. We had an amazing time. So glad we went. A journey worth taking.

BTW, they gave us each a gourmet box lunch to take on the plane...just in case we had to have one more bite.

Blackberry Farm, day 3

2013-06-13T06:41:04-04:00

We took full advantage of everything today. We got up early, had breakfast and then took out the Lexus. Lexus has some kind of partnership with Blackberry Farm. The cars they use are all from Lexus and the guests can sign up to use them. Emily and I took out the convertible for a little spin.

There were a few options on what to go see but many of them were going to take too long. This time of the year you can get trapped between a slew of cars driving in to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park so we opted for the Foothills Parkway. The parkway is its own national park that sits at the foothills of the northern Great Smoky Mountains. The views are spectacular and besides for a few motorcyclists we were the only ones on the road. The clouds hang down in the mountains before rising up as the day progresses. It is pretty awesome.

The views from each stop along the parkway are just spectacular.

At the end of the road is a lake. If you go left you can go down to a point but it is a long road and one way only. We turned around and came back.

Still had a little time to kill and stopped in an antique store. Lots of these on the road. Just rows of this kind of stuff.

Our next activity back at the farm was a cooking presentation. A little bit like being on the food channel. Michael Sullivan was the chef. He prepared our lunch. We did not learn anything and it went on a little bit too long but was more interesting was the questions that people asked. Obviously most people want to cook but don't feel completely comfortable doing it. Lunch was a salad of kale, strawberries, golden beets, caramelized pecans and a lemon dressing. Hanger steak with a red wine sauce, a potato gratin and sauteed red kale. For dessert, a banana fosters clafoutis.

Our next activity was truly a highlight. We went skeet shooting. I have a nice bruise on my right side to prove it. I had done skeet shooting once about 25 years ago and riflery at camp as a kid. The people who took us about were so nice and really great instructors. All the siblings of the young woman had gotten a full ride to college on shooting. Here I am.

Emily and I taking ourselves seriously.

We got back to the farm and got ready for dinner. We stopped by the farm on the way there. The small shed is where they keep all the supplies.

Here is where the vegetables are grown.

Might have been the best meal we had. Chicken liver pate with strawberies, watercress and rye toast. Notice the slates. I wonder if they came from Brooklyn Slate?

Roasted North Carolina shimp in Anson Mills grits, andouille sausage, preserved tomatoes and pickled pepper emulsion. This was seriously divine.

We both opted for the duck. Grilled Peking duck breast with asparagus, spring peas, beech mushrooms, Anson Mills corn crisp and foie gras emulsion.

After dinner we went down to the wine cellar. They have 50,000 bottles on site and another 100,000 in storage. The 50,000 is worth $8m. The sommelier showed us a bottle for $17k and they have sold two bottles so far. I am always fascinated that someone would order a bottle at that price but obviously they do.

Back to the golf cart and home.

Blackberry Farm day two

2013-06-12T06:39:25-04:00

We got up to a beautiful hot day. There has been a lot of rain down in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee so everything is lush and a tad humid.

Breakfast and lunch is served every day in the main house. Just like dinner the menu changes daily. There is a warm basket of freshly baked biscuits including two specialities that were made that morning. The buttery biscuits just melt in your mouth. This warm basket also includes two jams made on the premises.

Emily and I decided to take a hike. En route to the hike we passed the lake that sits below the breakfast/lunch house.

We passed the henhouse.

Through most of the walk we followed this brook. Kind of nice to walk with a babbling stream next to you. Very soothing.

You can hike around the premises that sit at the bottom of the Smoky Mountains. We got a guide to take us. Smart move as I am pretty sure we would have take a wrong turn somewhere and our guide had a serious pace going that kept us focused. The hike was about 4.5 miles. We got a nice education on the woods from plants and bugs. En route to the hike we passed the lake that sits below the breakfast/lunch house.

We made it up to the peak and through the mass of trees got a peak at the resort from above.

The honeysuckle is intoxicating.

After our hike it was time for lunch. Just to start we had a bowl of deep fried black-eyed peas.

We split a cheese plate for round 2. Everything is made on the premises including the charcuterie.

Our main course was a vegetable salad that had probably just been picked from the farm that morning. Over the top was a freshly grilled boneless chicken breast. Perfect meal.

The afternoon consisted of sitting by the pool. The views from the pool are insanely beautiful. Then we had a little spa treatment. The resort is in the midst of building a brand new spa so something to look forward to on our return trip.

For dinner that night we went with a red wine, Barbera D'Alba 2010. A few highlights again. Carmelized diver scallops over a potato yogurt mouse, mushrooms and a parley puree.

Roasted golden tilefish with preserved lemons, Charleston gold rice, inlet clams, chorizo and watercress.

After dinner we jumped in our golf cart and made our way home for the next day ahead.

The future of Meat

2013-06-11T06:42:06-04:00

There are a small group of committed people who are thinking about food policy in the United States. We should all say thank god. The issues are wide starting with the reality of what is truly going into our food, sustainable agricultural, food production, nutrition, food labeling, etc. If the majority of us knew the what antibiotics the cows were eating in this country in order to provide meat on the table for our eating pleasure we'd probably freak.

I am writing about this today because Food Tech Connect is having a #Hackmeat conversation this week. It is worth going to the site and reading all the different essays and what they are doing to create awareness around this topic.

Livestock in this country consumes almost 80% of the grains we grow. Of the GMO grains that are grown 98% go to livestock consumption. Beef is a $79 billion industry and over 36 million cows are harvested each year. The good news is there is a huge organic non-GMO movement going on and through technology we can do a better job at tracking what is going into the food that we eat.

I spoke with Claire Herminjard who is the entrepreneur behind Mindful Meats. She has built a company that is bringing local, non-GMO, organic pasture raised meats to the table. At this point her production is limited to restaurants and stores but with technology the hope is that one day she can just ship directly to the consumers who want to know exactly what product they are eating. So how is she doing this? Almost 16% of our beef comes from dairy cows. Certain dairy cows have Government certification that they are organic based on what they eat. When they are done producing milk, butter and cheese those cows are sold to regular production facilities to break down for sale. What Claire is doing is buying organic cows and breaking them down for meat consumption for the marketplace. Those dairy cows are environmentally friendly cows. She began to become interested in what kind of meat she was eating and through research and hard work was able to build a niche business which we can all hope will become bigger over time taking over the majority of the livestock consumption.

Another company that is Mercaris. As the organic non-GMO businesses grow there is a need for more data and information. There are commodity markets from grains to meats but there is not a commodity market separating out the organic non-GMO products. Mercaris is doing this. They are starting with agricultural crops but over time will move into other organic marketplaces. The lack of basic market information is astounding and Mercaris is changing that.

How Good is another company that is giving stores the ability to tag all their products so that the consumer can see how each product is rated. That rating system scores are backed by independent data. What is important here is that each store owner can track more efficiently what products their customer wants and why. If an owner discovers that their consumer is much more interested in non-GMO organic products then they will only want to purchase those products to stock their shelves. The market place is the end-all. If the market tells us they want more organic products then manufacturers will have to get into that market.

I am fascinated with the change in the food industry. Healthier local consumer products, organic non-GMO beef, sites where you can buy the most interesting indie food products being made across this country (aka Mouth), labeling products through private industry as the Government doesn't seem to be too quick on that one, more farm to table companies and companies such as Sea2Table that will soon be delivering fresh fish to your door. The costs may be higher but we will be healthier and perhaps because of the higher costs we will eat less. I predict that the next decade is going to be a tremendous shift in understanding and participating in the food that we eat at our table. The health economics for our country are huge. These changes will only be a very good thing.

Abby Falk, Global Citizen Year, Woman Entrepreneur

2013-06-10T07:25:18-04:00

I forgot how I originally met Abby but we have continued to talk since our first conversation. Abby has been thinking about building something like Global Citizen Year as far back as she can remember. Global Citizen Year gives students who are going to college an opportunity to take the a bridge year first and do service and learn in Asia, Africa and Latin America with hopes that these individuals will develop the skills to become tomorrows leaders.

Abby grew up in Berkely, CA believing that their life there was reflective of the rest of the world. Her Mom was a psychotherapist turned artist focsed on music and painting. Her Dad is a serial entrepreneur. He trained as a lawyer and after two years of practicing he broke free and started out on his own path working for himself. He had an office at home and always had a bunch of businesses he was juggling at different stages but he integrated that into his family life. He was there having dinner every night with the family and certainly working out of the house made a big difference.

As a kid her parents decided that travel was going to be an integral part of their lives. It was a way for them to learn about themselves. They traveled around the world from Latin America to to Southeast Asia. Those experiences were so far from anything she knew. They witnessed poverty and seeing that rattled her social justice nerve at a very young age.

Abby wanted to take a gap year. She called the Peace Corp to see if there was a program for her before going to college but they said she needed a degree first. So instead so spent the summer working in Nicaragua where she got a real appreciation for the need of access to education. She learns best through real world experiences and besides the ability to join the military at 18 she knew there was something missing. Instead like most young adults she went to college.

Abby went to Stanford where she majored in international relations. She designed her own major. Her junior year she got that bridge year she was looking for. She got a grant to start a community library where she worked in Brazil. That immersion crystallized what she wanted to do. Abby returned to Stanford with more purpose and had one year left to cram it all in. She decided to stick around and take a masters program in international comparative education before departing. She was about six months late to apply but showed up and pushed her way into the program. That was 12 years ago and it was there that she wrote the blueprint for Global Citizen Year. Looking back she is glad she had the wisdom not to launch her idea immediately but to let it simmer in her brain.

After graduation Abby said she was feeling frivolous and self indulgent so she called Back Roads, a travel company and landed a job. The job ended up being very formative as it taught her how to be a leader at 22. You show up in Italy with 25 kids who are looking to you to be responsible and lead them. She figured out how to use that muscle that creates leadership and in turn inspires confidence in yourself. She got there by faking it until you make it.

A call came from an organization in NYC to come work at a non-profit organization that wanted to alleviate global poverty through the Internet. Think of Kiva, Charity Water, etc. Ten years ago nobody had yet to figure out how to use those tools. It was a very entrepreneurial experience. She developed her own program while she was there and raised money. She learned how to run Global Citizen Year on someone elses dime. She wanted to take the program that she built and scale it to work in every high school across the country. After all she was an entrepreneur even from an early age when Abby took her fathers old neckties and attempted to sell them door to door in her neighborhood. Her boss told Abby that she had to think differently and that was when she realized her ambitions were much bigger than the organization and so she left.

Quick to plan B, Abby thought she should go to business school. She had two days to get her applications in to the few schools that the deadlines were not completely closed. She ended up at Harvard Business School. It was the last place she saw her self landing. She wanted to focus on non-profits so putting herself into a place so far from her comfort zone ended up being the best decision. It was the right place to incubate her idea. The summer between first and second year she interned for a social entrepreneur. She learned how to and how not to be a leader. Through that she got the confidence to create her own path.

Abby won the social impact pitch at Harvard and realized she was on to something. It was the commitment moment. She began Global Citizen Year the day she graduated. She moved back to the Bay area without any idea where to raise money, build on her idea and her team but she knew she had to give it a shot. It was the summer of 2008. After six months of being rejected she continued to persist until she finally got some funding. That fueled the fire.

Global Citizen Year has doubled in size every year since it was born. They started with 11 kids and the most recent group was 100. They have 200 alumni after four years. The plan is to scale to 1000 kids in five years. The hope is that as kids now say that they want to go work for Teach for America or the Peace Corp for one year there will be kids that will say I want to be a Global Citizen for one year before college. No doubt there is at least one if not two kids per high school that are perfect for this program. They are currently doing programs in Latin America, Brazil, Ecuador and Senegal. They plan on growing into China, India and the Middle East next.

Abby believes that America is going to need leaders down the road that have had exposure to the rest of the world and have cross cultural communication and language skills to understand the global picture and economy. Having those skills will help an individual understand how America is being perceived in the world and how we are part of the entire world picture. Being a Global Citizen for a year teaches individuals to be more constructive and collaborative in their approach to college. It gives them more intention to be entrepreneurial when it comes to their studies. Global Citizen Year is educating the next leaders of the world.

I am sure that Global Citizen Year will become a household name just as Teach for America has. Abby is a brilliant force of nature. She is working with colleges and educators across the country to make that happen. Just impressive.

Blackberry Farm

2013-06-09T09:00:58-04:00

This years Mothers Day was a good one for gifts. I got something special from each kid vs one gift. Emily decided that we should take trip together down to Blackberry Farm before she takes off for the summer. I had never heard of Blackberry Farm before but it ends up I was obviously not in the know.

We flew down on Sunday night and stayed through Wednesday. We got in late in the afternoon and took it easy until dinner. The property is owned by the Beall family. The Beall family founded the Ruby Tuesday Restaurant Group. They bought the original acreage to create a family place and over time continued to purchase property and that eventually evolved into what it is today. There are 62 rooms on the property including some private homes. The farm is attempting to be completely sustainable at one point but it is not quite there yet and of course there is the change of seasons. You can go there and eat three magnificent meals over the course of the day, take a horseback ride, a hike or even spend time doing a little farm work. The experience is unique.

This is the barn where dinner is served nightly. This barn is actually three barns that were brought down from Pennsylvania and then rebuilt on the property as one.

Inside the barn is absolutely beautiful.

Due to the size of the resort every room comes with their own golf cart. It is pretty clever. Emily and I made our way down to the barn for dinner. Every night there is a different menu and that alone is pretty impressive. The kitchen sits open for everyone to see. Here are few of the highlights from the meal.

Cornmeal fried gulf oysters over a watercress bacon salad mixed with a ramp aioli.

Fried Sweetbreads in a shellfish cream mixed with crayfish, fava beans and asparagus.

Roasted artic char over a local grain, smoked onion jam and asparagus.

We split the cheese plate every night for dessert. The cheese is made on the premises. We also had a bottle of white burgundy from Domaine Marc Morey.

All and all it was a good start to the perfect get away.