20
BUSINESS
TheMesaTribune.com
THE MESA TRIBUNE | MAY 2, 2021
|
@EVTNow
/EVTNow
Vendors converge at downtown Mesa grocer BY MELODY BIRKETT Tribune Contributor
J
on Przybyl brought bread and baked goods to downtown Mesa and now he has brought a concept that helps people just like him – local vendors who make unique products. His Main Street Harvest, which opened in January and which he runs with his wife Amanda, is just two doors down from Proof Bread – Jon’s �irst brick-and-mortar bakery that he opened last year after his made-at-home Old World artisan breads and pastries won a big following. “Proof has been a heck of an adventure with building out our �irst commercial production facility in downtown Mesa,” Jon said. “Main Street Harvest is an idea I have been dreaming about for many years,” he continued. “Basically, it’s a way to complete the circle of what we do at Proof and that brings all of our friends from the local food production community. “It’s a local driven grocery store. All of the products are produced by local families.”
Man Street Harvest in downtown Mesa brings together products made by local entrepreneurs. (Special to the Tribune) He ran a test in December around the holidays before opening Main Street Harvest by developing a priority list of vendors whose products best paired with bread. “The �irst vendor I called was a coffee vendor,” Przybyl said. But he wound up also carrying shrimp
Mesa restaurateur follows father’s dream BY CHRISTINA FUOCO-KARASINSKI Tribune Staff Writer
L
eo Chavez was working in a university’s �inance of�ice when his father, Edward T. Chavez, fell ill. He leaned over from his chair and said he wished his son would do something he loved. “I did not like the corporate world anymore,” Chavez said. “I was unhappy, and he got sick and he’s like, ‘You’re passionate about your food, so why don’t you pursue it?’” His father died in September 2017 and Chavez �igured it was “now or never.” The Tempe High School graduate went for it and opened the now-successful Herb ‘n’
Smoke food trailer at the end of 2017. “I went into the of�ice one morning and called my wife, I said, ‘I am quitting this morning and I gave my notice.’ Well, as you can imagine, there was no response on the other end. I thought I lost the call. “Then I heard her say, ‘Well, what is your plan?’ I said I would just make it work. She said she would stand by me.” On February 6 of this year, he took another chance. Chavez unveiled the Herb ‘n’ Smoke
��� HERB ���� 22
Those enticing smells pedestrians notice on Main Street come courtesy of Leo Chavez's Herb 'N Smoke. (Pablo Robles/Tribune Staff)
from Wild Shrimp Co. in Rocky Point. “They were among the last of the 20 I called,” he said. “If it was just bread and shrimp for a holiday market, that would be a little bit weird. So, we went in the priority order of things that paired with bread.” He admits he wasn’t sure his idea would
work, recalling how he thought “there’s no chance we’re going to have a whole grocery concept off the �ly because literally, I planned this event days before it happened. “To my great surprise, everyone I called agreed to join. We had a holiday market of around 20 vendors with everything from coffee to produce to chocolate to meat to eggs to shrimp to granola and a lot of things in between.” Yes, the store even carries locally produced chocolate. “We source DNA Chocolate for Proof and it’s the chocolate we’ve been using in our chocolate croissants since 2017,” said Przybyl. One of the most recent vendors to join is Ramona Farms. “They are a group from the Tohono O’odham tribe in Southern Arizona that grows grains and legumes and so there’s all kinds of beans as well as wheat and wheat berries grown by the tribe down there,” he explained. A lot of the original vendors brought in
��� HARVEST ���� 21