Off the Beaten Path

Beads of sweat are beginning to gather on Mike Ray's forehead and above his upper lip as he leads a tour of his 4,000-square-foot West Ashley bakery.

The ovens are in full effect on this blistering hot summer day and the heat is nearly paralyzing.

"It was hotter in the old place," Ray says as he shuffles across the flour-covered floor.

He is, of course, referring to Normandy Farm Artisan Bakery's original location on Society Street. A small, historic building that was nearly half the size of his current spot on Windemere Boulevard.

Ray has been pouring the same sweat into his business for 10 years now, and looks around with the gratification of a guy who knows that.

He is just one of many players in what has become in recent years a resurgence of entrepreneurs.

Uncertain futures and scarce job opportunities have spurred many to rely on industrious ideas, a little bit of cash and a lot of hard work to carve out a living the old-fashioned way.

The food industry seems to attract people who like to go their own way, maybe because we all need to eat.

So we decided to find a few brave individuals blazing new trails with specialty goods.

Their tastebuds run the gamut from French baking to beer, from nutty bars to coffee.

And we wanted to know why they do what they do.

Normandy Farm Artisan Bakery

The son of an Army colonel and a nurse practitioner, Ray spent much of his youth on an Army base in Germany. It was there that his parents' love for artisan breads was passed down to him.

"I worked in restaurants as a short-order cook and line guy all through college but I knew early on that I wanted to work for myself one day," recalls Ray. "After college, I went and helped my buddy open up a bakery out in Nashville and he said, 'If you want to be a great baker, go to this school in Aurillac, France, called the French School of Baking.' So I did."

A few years after his return, Ray moved to Charleston and bought Normandy Farm Artisan Bakery from an elderly French couple in 2000.

He built a reputation as a surfer dude with awesome bread; an innovator who never shied away from taking risks, he says.

Every day Ray and the staff get started around 4 a.m. making more than 500 pounds of dough and baking 30 different varieties of breads before punching out around midnight.

"It's a long process," says Ray. "A baguette, for instance, takes about 18 hours to make from start to finish and you have to stay on top of it or you can ruin the entire batch in a second."

Despite the exhausting hours, Ray still finds the time to be a husband and father as well as preparing his next business move.

"We're opening another location on Johns Island, hopefully by the end of the summer. It will be 100 percent retail and we're going to make fresh tortillas for restaurants out of the back," says Ray.

His advice to anyone contemplating baking as a career?

"This is a hard business that I wouldn't recommend to anyone," he says. "You know, bread is different every day so it's very hard to be consistent. You really just have to be young and dumb going into it."

Coast Brewing

In North Charleston, in a small, brick building nestled between the sounds of a rippling Noisette Creek and the thundering bangs of the nearby shipyard, David Merritt and Jaime Tenney are sweating away, too.

They're the rebellious pioneers behind Coast Brewing: Merritt as brewmaster while Tenney tends to the business end of things.

Their flagship brews the HopArt IPA and the 32/50 Kolsch set.

Since they opened in 2007, Merritt and Tenney have built a name for themselves as creative, environmentally responsible and consistent brewers who never compromise quality or integrity for a heftier bottom line.

Coast is 99 percent draft that's sold to a limited number of bars, retailers and restaurants around Charleston and in only one location outside of the Lowcountry.

Despite the limited distribution, Coast is slammed with orders, leaving Merritt and Tenney to work 14-hour days producing between 80 and 100 cases each week.

They could hire some help and lighten their work load, sure, but mass production and a global beer takeover isn't what it's about here, they say.

"We want to make beer that we enjoy drinking ourselves and we want it to be served in places that we would enjoy going to as well," says Tenney.

Tenney also serves as president of the beer advocacy group, S.C. Brewers Association, where she has worked tirelessly to get new legislation passed on everything from brewery tours to ABV (Alcohol By Volume) content.

"I spent several years making friends with people I never thought I'd be friends with," says Tenney. "I fought wholesalers and distributors for years just so we could offer tours of our brewery to the public," says Tenney.

Tenney isn't alone, however, as the number of breweries operating in the U.S. has more than tripled since 2000, with nearly 97 percent of those being craft breweries.

The rise in numbers has led to new legislation in the way a brewery can operate and earn income, offering Tenney hope that Coast can help extend South Carolina's boundaries on smaller breweries.

"Right now, we can only serve guests four 4-ounce samples and we can only sell a maximum of 288 ounces (one case of beer) directly out of the brewery. I would love for us to be able to do more, but we're just not quite there yet."

Nicole's Nutty Goodness

Five years ago, Nicole Rager was like many recent college grads. Fresh out of school, and out of Nebraska, she found herself waiting tables at a downtown restaurant and wrestling with where she should go next.

The options were limited in Rager's mind. She could either go to graduate school or try to survive another year in the sometimes maddening, always grueling, food and beverage industry.

Rager knew one thing for sure. She was restless.

"I was talking to my mom on the phone one day and she told me about this raw food seminar she had attended and about these fruit and nut bars that were there," Rager says with a grin from her new kitchen on King Street.

"A few days later I tried one and decided to make some of my own for my friends. They were like, 'These are really good. You should make more.' "

So she did. Lot's more.

Equipped with a $40 dehydrator and a few cellophane bags from Party City, Rager began making the now-popular dehydrated fruit and nut bars a few dozen at a time. She started selling them on the side to friends, family and anyone else who wanted to try out the new snack.

Before long, Rager's dehydrator couldn't keep up with the demand, Party City always seemed to be out of cellophane bags and Rager herself couldn't believe how fast her bars were selling.

The next year, she moved her operation into the kitchen at Three Little Birds Cafe on Windemere Boulevard, quit her serving job and gave her healthy treats a name: Nicole's Nutty Goodness.

The transition into the world of entrepreneurship didn't come naturally for the bio-psychology and Spanish major. The business world always seemed more fitting for her MBA brother.

"I'm nothing like it," explains Rager. "I'm a very cautious person and I've lived very frugally," says Rager. "So, I feel like I probably could have grown faster had I been more willing to take bigger chances."

Caution and frugality, however, just might have been a major part in Rager's success.

Today, she and her two full-time employees make roughly 270 bars a day selling to local restaurants and grocery stores, including Whole Foods and, soon, Earth Fare.

"I never expected it," she says. "But I feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing."

Caribrew Cold Press Coffee

If you stroll through the historic Harleston Village district in the center of the peninsula, you might find the little corner nook that is Queen Street Grocery sitting quietly beneath the oaks and palms above.

And if you do stumble upon the historic grocery, you might catch co-owner Hank Weed pouring out barrels of dark liquid into bottles before capping and stocking them in a cooler.

It's called cold press coffee; a potent form of coffee that was made popular in the '60s under the name Toddy coffee after it's arguable creator Todd Simpson.

Since Simpson introduced the Guatemalan drink to the U.S., a variety of different methods and flavors have been used to enhance everything from the coffee's effects to its temperature and taste.

Weed's brew is mixed with chocolate soy milk and served cold. And while the ingredients are simple, it's the production process that Weed keeps a proprietary secret.

"It's basically just coffee ground, water and time all sealed in a barrel and then steeped in mystery," he says.

Weed will reveal that he learned about the process during his travels around the Caribbean several years ago.

With nearly three times the amount of caffeine content of a regular cup of coffee and 70 percent less acidity, cold press became as much of an addiction as a favorite for many QSG regulars after Weed and fiancee Mary Wutz, also co-owner of the grocery, first introduced it to their cafe's menu last year.

"At first, we made it in small batches and sold it as ordered, but we just couldn't make enough of it there to keep up," says Weed.

So, he decided to move the operation to friend Mike Ray's kitchen at Normandy Farm where he could produce and store his batches in larger quantities. And so, after a few inspections and a few hoops were cleared, the coffee Weed had once made at home for himself and friends, was a full-fledged business venture, he says.

While only on the market for a few months and available in just a handful of locations, including Normandy Farm, Dellz Deli, the farmer's market at Marion Square and Queen Street Grocery, Weed says the bottled brew is exceeding expectations, selling nearly a hundred gallons or more every a week.

"This is something that requires no energy to make and is fully compostable (grounds), yet it's retailing very well. That is something that I am most proud of."