Behind the scenes...
It Starts with Family
Bleu Barn NC is a woman owned, and family operated business. Husband and wife duo, owners Tara and Brenton are classically trained chefs (Johnson & Wales University) with a love of supporting local. Our farmers, bakers, brewers, and purveyors are our family! We do what we do to build connections, and build community. Together we are building an organization to preserve our land, and to serve the best seasonal food our region has to offer. We hope our friendly customer service and chef inspired menu help tell our story.
Connecting the Community
Building connections with our community is a key factor in our business. We strive to connect, support, and adapt to our community and help them strive. We work with local nonprofits and donate product, time, and charitable donations. We work hand in hand with the Piedmont Culinary Guild who strives to connect the local food community and build comradery among the field. We work with our local farmers, purveyors, bakers, and brewers to buy local as much as possible. Keeping our money within the community, and supporting other small businesses. And most importantly, our customers. We pride ourselves in our friendly customer service, our willingness to accommodate, and customer loyalty. We strive to support the community we live and work in.
Emphasizing the Season
Preservation is a key factor in emphasizing the season. We dehydrate, can, pickle, ferment, smoke, jam, preserve, and freeze like our ancestors did. We love the challenge and reward of preserving and enhancing flavors through out the year to enjoy at a later time. Strawberry habanero jam in the middle of January, that’s because we froze our farmer's abundant strawberries at the peak of their season. House hot sauce changing flavor profiles from batch to batch, that’s because our team hand picks a variety of peppers at the end the season when they are perfectly ripe. This allows our farmer's to turn a profit before tearing out one seasons crops to make room for following seasons crops. This also helps reduce food waste.
We buy mostly heirloom grains and corn grown and milled in North and South Carolina. We want to help save our historical and heirloom varieties and show case them with the love and delicateness that our farmers put into bringing back these varieties.
Know your farmer. Shop local. Eat seasonally. Local love.
Taking Pride in Our Earth
We are here to pay homage to our neighbors, farmers, and land we live on while providing our guests with the best flavors our region as have offer. We strive to source a majority of our produce, herbs, and grains from local farmers, bakers, brewers, growers, and purveyors in our greater Piedmont Region. By sourcing products from our region, the bounties and scarcities of the season are always the theme of our menu with an approachable Americana flair. By using ingredients that are present in our region, we are able to serve foods that are fresher, buy food that is produced in a fair and equitable way, represent our historically local culinary traditions, and support our farmers who are striving to improve the quality of our food and land. We personally tour the farms that we work with. We know our farmers, we know their families, and we know their farming practices.
