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The Root Cafe Focuses On Locally Grown Food

3 min read

The Root Café LLC
Owner: Jack Sundell
Address: 1500 S. Main St., Little Rock 72202
Phone: (501) 414-0423
Hours: Tue.-Fri., 7 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; Sat., 8 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
Website: TheRootCafe.com
Email: TheRoot@TheRootCafe.com
Startup: June 14

The Root Café, an independent restaurant startup, is aiming to appease appetites and build its surrounding community. Owner Jack Sundell turned to that community to help him finance the startup of the restaurant, which focuses on serving locally grown food.

"Sweat equity," Sundell, of Little Rock, called what got the small café off and running. Two years ago, Sundell and his business partner at the time started catering and holding fundraising dinners to save the money they would need to open The Root Café.

Local food is both a business and a philosophy for Sundell. "We all eat three times a day," he said. "It’s something we all have in common." He said he hoped having a meal at The Root will become a conversation starter for the idea of buying local, for everything from food to hardware.

As far as food goes, The Root is trying to lead by example. Its website lists 52 different Arkansas farmers and food producers that supply the restaurant. The restaurant is purchasing its meat from small farms in central Arkansas, said Sundell, and is buying its bread from Boulevard Bread in Little Rock.

Sundell also places a strong emphasis on homemade food. He said the restaurant was curing its own beef for Reuben sandwiches, making its own bratwurst and sauerkraut and pickling its own cucumbers, a process that, he said, takes 14 days.

Many of the restaurant’s decorations are reused and recycled items. Sundell’s father-in-law is an antiques dealer in Texarkana. Sundell said that as soon as his father-in-law knew about the restaurant, he began collecting the items that adorn the café’s interior. Traditional butter churns and old soda bottles can be found, and an antique fire hose reel sits in one of the gardens outside the cafe for no other reason than to "take your mind out of the 21st century and kind of transport you to an older time," Sundell said.

For now, Sundell said, the restaurant will focus on lunch. But he wants to expand to offer dinner and, eventually, brunch on Sundays. The mostly traditional menu lists burgers, salads and Reubens, but there is variety in the Vietnamese spicy banh mi sandwich as well as vegan and gluten-free options.

The Root Café’s catering and fundraising dinners built a lot of word-of-mouth support for the restaurant. "It’s been much brisker than expected," Sundell said of business. The restaurant also has taken advantage of social media and plans to do door-to-door marketing with flyers in The Root’s neighborhood.

That brisk business made Sundell realize the biggest misconception he had about starting his own business. He said he thought that when people told him he would be putting in 16-hour days seven days a week that they were overestimating, but that’s what he’s had to do. For Sundell, however, that’s no reason to shy away from starting a business if that’s your dream. "Stay with it, especially if you believe in what you’re doing," he said.                                           

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