Tag: Memphis Kitchen Co-Op

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Food & Drink Food Reviews

Working Out Never Tasted So Good

Richard and Molly McCracken with kids Kaylee and Ryker (Photo by Michael Donahue)

Richard and Molly McCracken are still keeping people in shape — as far as food goes.

The McCrackens are owners of Memphis Kitchen Co-Op at 7946 Fischer Steel Road in Cordova. They also are owners of Amplified Meal Prep: healthy meals that can be purchased online at eatamplified.com and at the co-op’s Memphis Kitchen Co-Op Marketplace.

Amplified Meal Prep has been “going on about seven years now,” Richard says. The idea behind the food is to get people to eat “the Amplified way: maintain weight or weight loss.”

And just to give people a healthy body. “Eating healthy just has so many health benefits. That’s what we do.”

Richard, who was born in Chicago, and Molly, who is from Ohio, were college athletes. Richard went to University of Central Missouri, and Molly went to Morehead State University. “She was a gymnast and cheerleader, and I was a wrestler in college.”

Richard, who does the cooking, began helping in the kitchen when he was “a little kid.” His mom, K.C. Bryant, taught him. “We never bought ‘box’ anything. My mom made everything from scratch. She always needed help, so I would always help her in the kitchen.”

He made sloppy joes and “Heavenly Hamburger” — noodles and marinara with cream cheese and cheddar cheese on it. That’s one of “Mimi’s Meals,” which they carry online and at the market.

Richard continued to cook. “I cooked for all my teammates in college. That was just like meat and carbs. I wasn’t doing anything crazy.”

Being college athletes, he says, they tried to “eat pretty clean.”

Richard met Molly at WellWorX gym, where they both worked at the time. That’s also where Richard and a business partner began their Ultimate Foods business 10 years ago. It was the predecessor to Amplified Meal Prep. “We just wanted to create healthy fast food.”

“Nick’s Barbecue Bowl,” which included barbecued chicken and sweet potatoes, was one of their most popular bowls, he says.

He and Molly began Amplified Meal Prep seven years ago. “That started at my friends’ house. We were making meals for them.”

The co-op, which they opened three years ago in a 6,500 square-foot-building, is for people who don’t have room in their homes to make food in quantity. They now house 60 small businesses, Richard says.  

Their commercial equipment includes eight convection ovens, eight standard ovens, four 10-burner stoves, two flat-top grills, a 30-quart and 60-quart mixer, food processors, a 24-by-14-foot walk-in cooler, a 32-by-7-foot walk-in display cooler, 50 prep tables, 120 storage shelves, and 40 feet of vent hood space. They also added a baker’s rotating rack oven, Richard says. “It’s a super cool oven.”

Recently, the McCrackens have been concentrating on catering. They previously did some catering, including weddings and for some Memphis Grizzlies players. “A little catering stuff here and there, but we never really
have put it out there that we actually
do catering.”

Their catering menu fare isn’t strictly for those who are health-conscious, Richard says. “We do everything. We can do the healthy all the way to deep Southern fried cooking.”

Healthy items would be “the fresh fruit and veggies. More lean cuts of meat and that kind of stuff. Not heavy lasagnas or your pastas with sauces, or anything Alfredo. We’re not going to do anything like that in the healthy catering. We’re going to keep it pretty clean, but still it’s going to be good.”

If someone doesn’t want the emphasis to be on healthy cooking, Richard says, “We can do fried chicken. We can do lasagna, chicken wings, any type of Italian, any type of Asian. Literally anything.”

They recently introduced a brand-new Amplified Meal Prep breakfast menu online and in the
co-op market. “We’ve switched out all the breakfasts. All the breakfasts are brand-new.”

And, he says, “We’ll have a new lunch and dinner menu in the next couple of weeks.”

Other new Amplified Meal Prep dishes included a seared tuna poke bowl. They also are offering new salads, including one with salmon, coconut rice, and mango, and a Santa Fe salad with Southwestern-seasoned chicken over Romaine lettuce, tortilla strips, a chipotle dressing, and tomato.

The “Amp Market Salad” consists of chicken, granola, blueberries, strawberries, and apples with “a tangy vinaigrette dressing.”

And their “Bang Bang” chicken salad is “chicken with our Bang Bang dressing. It’s like a sweet, spicy dressing over chicken with lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, and other goodies.”

Richard and Molly also are planning to get into shipping. They want to ship their Amplified Meal Prep meals regionally. “We want to ship to the Nashville area, the Atlanta area, and, hopefully, after that we can probably expand a little more.”

They will ship “everything that’s available online. They order and we just pack it up. Put cold packs in and send it to them.” 

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Sweet Treats from Carrington’s Catering

Carrington Wise (Photo: Michael Donahue)

Carrington Wise sings the praises of her lemon tart.

The sweet-but-not-too-sweet tarts are one of the many items she bakes and sells at her business, Carrington’s Catering.

“When I was about 16, I was looking through my mother’s cookbooks — one of my favorite things to do — and came across a cookbook all handwritten in different peoples’ handwriting,” Wise says.

Her mother’s friends compiled recipes as a wedding gift. “This particular recipe jumped off the page at me. ‘Lemon tarts.’ And it just looked so fresh and lemony and tangy.”

Wise began baking the tarts. And people loved them.

Everything she makes has a certain criteria: “Everything has to taste good. So, these are recipes I have pulled together over the years. I do research, figure out what looks good to me, and the best way to do it. And then if that goes well and gets a good reception from my primary customers, that might go into my repertoire.”

Singing is another skill Wise also knows something about. She grew up around music in the Washington, D.C., area. Her father was a classically trained amateur musician. “We all took lessons, but what I remember growing up was that he would often invite people who were musicians who he knew some other way and we would have musical evenings.”

Wise, who “ended up being a singer,” performed baroque and contemporary songs. “These were art songs. As I grew up, I was often a guest soloist with an orchestra. It was usually a local orchestra or with a college.

“While a member of the Choral Arts Society of Washington, I sang under the direction of Leonard Bernstein, Robert Shaw, Antal Dorati, Mstislav Rostropovich, Lorin Maazel, and others.”

She began teaching music after she got married. “I started children’s choirs wherever we lived.”

And, she adds, “Every one of them is still going.”

Wise continued teaching after she, her husband, and four children moved to Memphis around 2007. But she became dissatisfied with where she was working and decided she was going to stop teaching. She wanted another job, but she announced, “I don’t know what else to do.”

Her daughter, Margaret, had the solution. “She had noticed when I was in the dumps there were two things that would always pull me out of them. One was working with children, drawing them out, and the other was baking. So, I did that.”

It took about a year for Wise to figure out how to go about it. “I could see myself in a small bakery with awnings and flowers and it being this very inviting place. And decided against that because of having to man it. I didn’t have a place, either.”

So, she started her business in the Calvary Episcopal Church kitchen. “I was baking lemon tarts and pies and cookies. One of the first things were the sweet potato biscuits with country ham. It was mainly that sort of thing. And then I started adding scones, cheese wafers. That was a big thing. I didn’t want to do just sweets. I wanted to do some savory as well.”

People at church began buying her items. She also set up at the Downtown Memphis Farmers Market.

Now working out of Memphis Kitchen Co-Op & Marketplace at 7942 Fischer Steel Road, Wise sells at Agricenter Farmers Market and Graz’n Tables Charcuterie & Bakery Bar in Collierville.

“Our catering is for maybe up to 150 people. I don’t tend to do weddings, but I love to do the functions around the weddings. Like teas, showers, luncheons, and things like that. I also do box lunches. We cater dinners. Cocktail receptions are a big thing.”

And yes, she does sing — at times — in the kitchen. It can be Bach, Shubert, a bluegrass tune, or a folk tune her mother taught her. But, Wise says, “My voice bothers me. I don’t like the sound of it so much. Sometimes I will hum or whistle. I will sing in church. And some days I feel like I got it back. And the other times, no. Too much bravado.”

But, she confesses, “I almost named my business ‘With a Song in My Tart.’”

To order, text Wise at 901-481-4206 or email info@carringtonscatering.com.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Taco Tuesdays

Jordan Beatty (Photo: Michael Donahue)

Along with his tacos, Jordan Beatty is making two-pound colossal burritos at his Taco Tuesdays setup at Memphis Kitchen Co-Op.

Beatty, 29, isn’t Mexican, but, he says, “I would definitely say Mexican food is part of my vibe.” And, he adds, “I wanted to share my passion for Mexican food with other people who would enjoy it. I’ve been working on my Mexican food for about two years now. I’m really honing in on it. I’m really proud of my product.”

Tacos were Beatty’s introduction to Mexican food. “The first time I ever ate Mexican food was probably Taco Bell. My father was regional manager at Taco Bell for six or seven years. He managed four different stores, so we ate Taco Bell. I have three brothers my size. We are very large men. We ate Taco Bell almost every night ’cause that’s what my dad could get for free.”

Mexican food gives him “a good feeling,” Beatty says. “It’s very straightforward and honest. The ingredients speak for themselves without any real intense culinary techniques. It’s just pure flavors put together.”

Opera singing was Beatty’s first vibe. “When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be an opera singer. Not a chef. I would sing opera music to anyone who would listen.”

A “true baritone,” Beatty, who sang in the choir in middle school, high school, and college, liked the “emotion, the intensity” of opera music. Cooking wasn’t on his radar. “I come from a long line of people who can’t cook at all.”

Little Caesars pizza was Beatty’s first restaurant job. “I was the sign shaker from 11-3 p.m. And then I would go inside and scrub and clean.”

One sign was shaped like a guitar. “You’d see me dancing on the side of the road with that sign.”

Beatty also cooked. “They showed me how to make pizzas. And then I started working the line. I learned how to make dough.”

In college, Beatty wanted to be a teacher. He later opened Tiger Paws Landscape, his own landscape business, but he closed it after he developed “an allergy to trees, grass, and weeds.”

Beatty, who married a professional chef, Lee Anna Beatty, while he had his landscaping business, told her he was interested in learning to cook. “I just didn’t really know where to start. It just so happened that week chef Spencer McMillin posted on his Facebook page that he needed a dishwasher for the space where he was. Caritas Village. I started the next day.”

He rose from dishwasher to sous-chef, thanks to McMillin’s guidance. “I loved it. I went straight into it. I haven’t looked back.”

Beatty also worked at Tamboli’s Pasta & Pizza, The Vault, and FLIP SIDE Memphis before he moved to Memphis Kitchen Co-op and began working for co-owner Richard McCracken’s Amplified Meal Prep.

He also became his wife’s chef at Busy Bee Catering. “We do a little bit of everything. I would say mostly we are Asian fusion, Mexican inspired, and classic Americana.”

Beatty’s Taco Tuesdays is a part of Busy Bee Catering. “We’ve been serving what I call a premium taco bar for a while.”

He held his first official Taco Tuesday on August 8th. “I make my own adobo sauce, which is the basis of a lot of my Mexican cooking. A mixture of peppers, onions, garlic, vinegar, spices, and oil.

“I marinate my meats in it and my mushrooms. And that’s how I make my taco sauce.”

He offers chicken, beef, shrimp, barbacoa, and marinated mushroom tacos. “And I do one chef special every week that’s going to change.”

His first one was pollo adobo blanco. “Adobo beurre blanc over marinated chicken.”

And, yes, Beatty still sings. “Constantly. But not really for other people’s enjoyment. Just my own.”

Instead of opera, Beatty sings rock, folk, Americana, and country music.

“That’s one of the great parts of being a chef. The kitchen is my stage. I can just enjoy my time and sing and just kind of have a good time. And as long as I’m doing that, I don’t feel like I’m working at all.”

Memphis Kitchen Co-Op is at 7946 Fischer Steel Road in Cordova.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Not Just Rabbit Food

Camri McNary of The Vegan Goddess (Photo: Photos and Phases)

Camri McNary originally wanted to make a living concentrating on people’s faces, not their stomachs.

“I wanted to be a makeup artist growing up,” McNary says. “That was my passion.”

She had second thoughts after she graduated from beauty school. “I said, ‘I can’t imagine doing this my entire life. Touching people’s faces and doing their hair. Maybe this isn’t what I want to do.’ It just didn’t feel like fun. It felt more like work. And I don’t like the feeling of work.”

But now, McNary, owner of The Vegan Goddess, probably works harder than she would have as a beautician. “I cook huge portions of things. It’s definitely work, but it’s still fun,” she says.

In addition to holding Sunday pop-ups of her vegan creations, McNary teaches cooking classes and makes and sells her packaged dishes at Memphis Kitchen Co-Op & Marketplace.

She began “experimenting” in the kitchen when she was 8 years old. “I made a Mexican pizza,” she remembers. “Back in the day I ate meat. I didn’t grow up vegan.”

McNary helped her grandmother, veteran professional cook Donna Carr, in the kitchen. McNary marveled at Carr’s expertise. “She flowed so naturally. Like it was instinctual.”

Two years later, McNary began cooking family breakfasts. “I was a chunky kid growing up. That’s why I transitioned to vegan. I loved cooking, loved eating,” she says.

After beauty school, McNary worked in a Kroger organic foods section, where she learned about holistic and natural herbs and gluten-free products. “My grandmother used to cook nothing healthy. I wasn’t familiar with any of those things.”

McNary became a pescatarian after she got a job at the old Stash Home Furniture store. She met a lot of customers from India who had relocated to Memphis to work at FedEx.“[They] were big on vegan. They introduced me to things they ate and their lifestyles, and it intrigued me. And I did my own research,” she says.

When she stopped eating beef and dairy and ate only seafood, she says, “I noticed a huge change in my energy, my body, my skin.”

McNary began creating vegan dishes, which she posted on Facebook. “I would make enchiladas, tacos, burritos, everything vegan,” she says.

People began sharing her posts, and she built on that momentum. “It was like a chain effect. It happened so quickly.”

McNary, who was selling health insurance from home, officially began her vegan food business in June 2021.

She started out simple, with a few items, including a Cheesy Gordita Crunch, patterned after the Taco Bell item. “Completely vegan. I put beans, rice, chipotle sauce, mushrooms and walnuts, and vegan flatbread, and I covered it in cheese and wrapped it in a crunchy taco shell.”

McNary made vegan versions of familiar fast food items. In addition to “veganizing the entire Taco Bell menu,” McNary made a vegan version of McDonald’s McRib and chicken sandwiches.

People can be skeptical about vegan food. “They think it’s rabbit or bird food.”

McNary quit her health insurance job after The Vegan Goddess “blew up.”

On March 6th, McNary and her business partner Rebecca Devlin will feature a “vegan Taco Bell menu” from noon to 4 p.m. at her pop-up at Memphis Kitchen Co-Op. Previous pop-ups include one that featured her “barbecue tacos” made of jackfruit, which has the texture of pulled pork, with black beans and pico de gallo.

In addition to her ever-increasing menu, McNary makes her own sauces. “I use chickpeas and northern beans — white beans — to make the base of the sauce, and I infuse it with chili peppers and wine, lime, and cilantro. All the good flavors.”

McNary eventually wants to open a food truck and, perhaps, a brick-and-mortar restaurant. “I want to go nationwide,” she says.

McNary wants people to experience vegan food. “I don’t necessarily want to push people to be vegan. It’s more, ‘Listen to your body and how it reacts when you eat certain things.’ That’s what I promote.”

Memphis Kitchen Co-Op & Marketplace is at 7942 Fischer Steel Road in Cordova; (901) 674-2541.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Bibby’s Bakes: ‘Junk’ Food That’s Good for You

Libby Brown and Anna Netri (Photo: Michael Donahue)

Anna Netri thanks keto, the pandemic, and her mother for Bibby’s Bakes.

Netri and her mother, Libby “Bibby” Brown, are partners in the business, which offers more than 50 gluten-free, sugarless baked items, which they sell online at bibbysbakes.com and at the Memphis Kitchen Co-Op at 7946 Fischer Steel Road in Cordova.

They introduced their frozen pizzas Wednesday, November 10th. “The crust is my invention,” Netri says. “We make cheddar biscuits and turn that into a biscuit bread. It’s really delicious and airy and crunchy, and we pile it high with toppings.”

In 15 minutes, “you’re eating something that is mind-blowing.”

Netri isn’t a fan of “healthy” food. “I don’t want it to taste healthy. When you put something from us in your mouth, it tastes like you’re eating junk. And it should.”

She didn’t cook much before the pandemic, Netri says. “I’d never call myself a cook. I always understood how flavors worked together.” Netri and Brown got on the high-fat, low-carb, gluten-free ketogenic “keto” diet before the pandemic. Before that, she says, “I would binge when nobody was looking and often it would be on crap like chips and bread. Keto was a good way of eating because it eliminated a lot of those trigger foods.”

Her mother found gluten-free recipes on the internet. “She made a lot of different kinds of breads and biscuits. They were delicious. And they were made with almonds.”

Netri was a life coach for years until the pandemic. “I was doing some re-evaluation of my life before I decided to start it up again. And I just kind of let it go with no real plans of what to do.”

She thought about her mother’s biscuits. “So, last year, I just looked at her one day and said, ‘I wonder if we could sell these biscuits?’ People on these diets don’t have anything like this and don’t know where to get them.” And, she adds, “Most gluten-free things taste like dirt.”

Netri, who has “the entrepreneurial brain,” wondered what else they could make. “I take the different recipes of things she did and develop them further to make our own unique recipes. Our biscuits went through tweaks for eight months before they finally got to be our signature biscuits.”

They began selling the biscuits on Nextdoor. “Within 10 minutes we had two people who wanted some of these biscuits.”

The business “took off.” They added cookies and other desserts, including little cakes with whipped cream in the middle and covered with ganache.

They are constantly coming up with more items. “We do stuff for breakfast. We sell sausage and biscuits, sausage and egg and cheese biscuits, which are so good. We’ve got tons of desserts, muffins, cookies. And then we do casseroles and dinners. We do a keto shepherd’s pie that’s amazing, a meatloaf, and one of the people’s favorites — my signature recipe —a Mexican chicken and rice fajita casserole.”

They also make full-size cakes and a French silk pie, which Netri describes as “melt in your mouth.”

Their cauliflower mashed potatoes would be “perfect for a Thanksgiving meal. It tastes just like mashed potatoes.”

Bibby’s Bakes was “just a cottage bakery” until Netri and Brown moved into a commercial kitchen, Memphis Kitchen Co-Op.

In addition to selling at the Memphis Kitchen Co-Op and online, Netri says. “In just a few weeks, we’re going to be in Crossroads Vendor Market in Olive Branch.”

But they don’t want to get too big, Netri says. “It’s just the two of us. We do all the work. And we just got into this thing for a little extra money.”

Working at Bibby’s Bakes does have its benefits, Netri says. “I eat way too much of our food. Nobody should eat as much almond flour as I do. But I still haven’t had sugar in over three years. I don’t miss it because my life is filled with sweet treats.”

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Food & Drink Food Reviews

Can’t Stand the Heat? Get into Memphis Kitchen Co-Op

Molly and Richard McCracken at their Memphis Kitchen Co-Op (Photo: Michael Donahue).

Richard McCracken is happy to say, “Amplified Meal Prep has a new home now.”

He and his wife Molly are the owners of their first brick-and-mortar business, Memphis Kitchen Co-Op, at 7946 Fischer Steel Road in Cordova.

The 6,500-square-foot building, which also houses their healthy food business, Amplified Meal Prep, has space for people like themselves, who don’t have room in their homes to make food in quantity.

“I just want to help people,” Richard says. “I wanted to open a community kitchen where people can rent from us. But I didn’t want to be like, ‘Here’s the key. You owe us $700 the first of the month. See you later.’ I want to be able to help people do what we did. We wanted to have a place where we can help you start a business from A to Z.”

Somebody might say, “I have an Aunt Sally, and she makes the most amazing peanut butter pie in the world.”

So, Aunt Sally decides to sell her pies, but she finds it’s $2,500 a month to rent a kitchen. Then she needs an oven and a kitchen mixer. That’s $12,000. She also needs other kitchenware, which could be another thousand. She says, “Oh, my God. I just can’t do it.”

“That’s where we come in,” Richard says. “We offer any equipment you need. I’ll buy it for your use. You come in. Pay us rent.”

Their commercial equipment includes eight convection ovens, eight standard ovens, four 10-burner stoves, two flat-top grills, a 30-quart and 60-quart mixer, food processors, a 24-by-14-foot walk-in cooler, a 32-by-7-foot walk-in display cooler, 50 prep tables, 120 storage shelves, and 40 feet of vent hood space.

The McCrackens “will sit down with you if you have any concerns — how to price food, food costs, where to go for your business license, Department of Agriculture certified aspect of agriculture. We help you with all that.”

They also provide help getting the word out online. “We have an in-house marketing group, Ruby Red Media, that does individual or group social media [and] handles email and stuff like that.”

Memphis Kitchen Co-Op rent is based on time, space, and need, but it’s less than most commercial kitchens, Richard says.

Unlike other commercial kitchens, they will include a store. “We’re going to sell all our tenants’ products in there. People can walk in and buy 30 or 40 different companies’ products.” They also will have a website, where people can order Memphis Kitchen Co-Op products. “We deliver or you come to the store and we have it ready for you in a box.”

Renters can range from bakers and food truck owners to people who prepare school lunch programs. “Anybody who wants to start up a new business, we’ll help them get going.”

Richard also plans to till a 14-by-120-foot patch of grass next to the building for a community garden.

Richard, who wrestled for 20 years, and Molly opened Amplified Meal Prep three years ago. Customers can order healthy comfort food or build custom meals according to their specific diet plan.

They were “camped out” in another commercial kitchen, but, Richard says, “We ran out of room.” The couple couldn’t operate out of that space anymore. “So I started looking in November of last year for a commercial building. All of a sudden this popped up.” Molly originally thought the building was too big, but Richard told her, “We’ll grow into it.”

Memphis Kitchen Co-Op is “a testament of hard work. And I really want to get our message out there that people like me and Molly, who worked our full-time jobs for two years and Amplified two years — that’s what you have to do. Now look at us. We have, essentially, a million-dollar building for four years. It’s centrally located, smack dab in the middle of everything. It’s 15 minutes from Downtown, 15 minutes from out east, and 15 minutes from Germantown.”

For information on Memphis Kitchen Co-Op, go to memphiskitchenco-op.com.