This piece was originally published in the Memphis Mirror, now known as DH Online.
By last September, more than 100,000 small businesses across the country had shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. The following month, Anna Turman decided to open one.
An avid baker, Turman said she toyed with the idea of starting a baking business for a long time, but between being a mother and working full time as a digital content producer for FOX-13, life always seemed to get in the way.
Until, that is, like many workers in America, Turman found herself working from home and with a lot more time on her hands than usual because of the pandemic.
This new-found free time provided her the opportunity to genuinely consider taking the plunge on the business venture ever-present in the back of her mind.
“One day I just sat down and was like, ‘I’ve thought about [starting my own business] for 10 years,’” Turman said. “I had some money saved up and felt like if I didn’t start then, there would always be some reason or some fear to not start.”
She got to work perfecting recipes she’d been making for years and began taking the steps to start her own business, including obtaining a manufacturers license, securing a workspace at a local commercial kitchen, and brainstorming business names.
Then finally, Turman’s dream that was 10 years in the making became reality when Big River Bakehouse, which specializes in gluten free and Paleo-friendly products, launched online last fall.
With her bakehouse, Turman, who adheres to the Paleo diet, wanted to provide customers with goods they could enjoy, but not feel guilty about doing so.
“I’m passionate about making desserts people can eat and not feel like they’re packing on the carbs and sugar,” she said. “Anything that I make, I want it to be something I would feel good putting into my own body.”
As a first-time business owner, she wanted to test the waters with three different varieties of granola because she said they would package easily.
The granola varieties, which were sold in a few local grocery stores and online for shipping, proved to be a success in the community and a few other states across the country.
But as with any new business, it was a process of trial and error and Turman continued to learn things about herself and what she wanted for her bakehouse as she went.
All photos by Brooke Luna
“With the granola, there was a lot of food waste and it was really time consuming and laborious,” she said.
So, emboldened by the positive response to her granola but wanting to try her hand at selling her baked goods, she recently refocused her attention to her Mudstone brownies, named for the muddy Mississippi River.
The bite-sized brownies come in two varieties: one with nuts, and one without. They are made with only natural ingredients like organic, 100% cacao unsweetened dark chocolate chips, cocoa powder, raw clover honey, and coconut oil in place of butter.
There’s also no flour or added sugar, but Turman does sprinkle in collagen peptides for added health benefits.
The original brownie recipe is one Turman found online years ago, but by adding her own special touches here and there over the years, like the collagen peptides, the recipe has since evolved into her own concoction.
“I kind of tried to create [the recipe] just based on all the stuff that I personally would eat and want in a healthy brownie,” she said. “They are my first little foray into the healthy desserts.”
Every Friday afternoon, arriving straight from work and lugging two cardboard boxes full of these ingredients, Turman devotes a few hours to preparing batches of her brownies at Otherfoods Kitchen in Midtown.
She measures out the ingredients, stirs them together in a large, silver bowl with a rubber spatula, scoops the batter into a 24-square silicone mold, then places them in the oven to bake for 25 minutes.
“Honestly, it's just like how you would make brownies from scratch at home,” she said. “The worst part is having to wait for them to cool because if they're not cooled, they will fall apart while you're trying to take them out of the silicone.”
Once they’ve sufficiently cooled, Turman wraps the brownies in foil and takes them home, where she packages them with a heat sealer and then sticks a label with her logo and the nutrition facts on the front.
After packaging them, she’ll often take a batch of brownies to her coworkers at FOX-13 to spread the word about her business and to get feedback.
So far, Turman said locals, including her daughter’s father, Mark Plumlee, are loving the Mudstone brownies.
“The new line of brownies is my go-to snack,” Plumlee said. “They travel well for hiking or biking, and they’re delicious.”
Photos by Brooke Luna
Although it might sound like a risk, Turman’s not alone in starting a business during the pandemic.
As was reported by the Wall Street Journal in September, “Americans are starting new businesses at the fastest rate in more than a decade, according to government data.”
And just like many of these entrepreneurs, Turman has a lot of plans in mind for the future of her small business.
She hopes to one day have a brick-and-mortar store with a team of employees and an expanded menu of baked goods.
But for now, she’ll keep baking because it’s what she loves to do.
“I get to be creative,” she said. “You can just forget about everything else and just go be creative and make something. Especially, if you then get to share it with other people, then that puts a smile on your face.”
Turman will be selling her Mudstone brownies downtown every other Saturday this season at the Memphis Farmer’s Market, beginning April 3. For more information, visit MemphisFarmersMarket.org and BigRiverBakehouse.com.
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