A Conversation With… Kathy Brown, Owner & Proprietor, Ozark Country Market

 Where else can you talk Arkansas jams and jellies,

Amish butter, and your favorite Eagles songs?

So tell me, Kathy, what’s the Ozark Country Market all about?

The Ozark Country Market is a specialty food store and plant nursery, and our business model is products of Arkansas. We like to support the local economy, so a lot of the things we sell are made right here in Heber Springs—especially the non-food items. All of our textiles and wood products are made in Heber. My mother-in-law makes the candles and the wax melts. My manager's mom makes the hand towels, and her mother-in-law makes some of the other things back here. I like being the place where people come for local gifts. If you're going to buy something for somebody, a lot of times they're looking for something local. So our goat’s milk soaps are made at the goat farm just down the road.

Then we expand out: Is it made in the county? Is it made in the state? We fill in from there. We also sell things from border states like Oklahoma and Texas. And we sell Amish products, which come from Ohio and Pennsylvania. Before I purchased the store, I was just a customer here. And one thing I knew about this place was that they had the best butter ever. It’s Amish butter. Best butter you ever put in your mouth.

So you didn’t start the Market?

I did not. I'm the third owner. It was started in 1996 by Larry and Charlotte Vanvekoven. This location was just a horse pasture at the time, but they sat here with a clicker counting the cars that went by. Everybody coming into Heber Springs from the different locations passed by here, and the Vanvekovens liked that this location was high and dry on top of the mountain. “This is the spot,” they said, and they approached the property owner and made an offer for the land. Then they set about building the building that we're in right now. When they owned this place, they themselves made all of the jarred goods that they sold here.

They owned the store until 2008. Then from '08 to 2016, it was owned by another couple. And in 2016, my husband and I purchased it. We raised our kids working the cash registers. They were old registers, and the kids had to stand on milk crates when we first bought it.

Are you from here?

No, I'm from Oklahoma. But we've been in Heber Springs for 15 years. I lived just down the road. And when my youngest child started kindergarten, one of my friends said, "You ought to buy that little market now that you've got some free time on your hands."

I didn’t even know it was for sale. But I walked in and God worked out the details from there. And it's been a really good business. It's been a good business. My kids have learned hard work. They've learned customer service. They've learned math as they checked customers out.

I’ll tell you a funny story. My youngest, Landon, is a math whiz. And one day in plant season, I was on one register and he was on the other. The store was packed, two lines to check out. Very busy. And Landon, who couldn't have been more than 7, said to a customer, "I'm sorry, sir, we don't take those here."

"What don't we take?" I said. And my son holds up a $50 bill. "He's trying to use fake money," he said. So I went and took a closer look. "This is a $50 bill," I explained to Landon. "I've never seen one of those,” he said. “Is that real?"

Meanwhile, the customer's busting out laughing. "Sir,” I said, “we take those, we take twenties, we take hundreds, we take all cash. Matter of fact, we prefer it!"

So many great little memories like that here. And we have kept true to the original business idea—being a small country store. We've just added to the product lines. And just recently we added a coffee shop, making use of the commercial kitchen where the original owners made all those jams and jellies. It’s a business inside a business—the only drive-through on top of the mountain for food and drink.

 So tell me what you did before this, besides raising kids.

 I graduated from Oklahoma State University with a business degree. I was in banking and finance, and that's what I did.

My husband and I are also musicians.  I was touring around with an album that I'd made in Nashville and met him on an Opry show. We started playing music together professionally, and then we got married. And as fate would have it, we’re now a family of five.

Well, it’s not all fate….

 No, I guess not. But it’s on him. He should’ve bought better cable TV.

What kind of music do you play?

We play all kinds now, but at the time we were playing country music exclusively.

We play a lot of classic rock. My favorite band is the Eagles. So I do a lot of Eagles music. But it depends on what the event is. Whatever the people want to hear is what you play. Our children play with us now a lot of the time. Two of them are in the band fulltime, and our daughter plays with us sometimes. It’s really fun.

And here at Ozark Country Market, I always keep a guitar in the office that people will pick up and play. I once had a whole store full of people singing “Sweet Caroline” together, and that's one of my best memories of this place. Small town America is alive and well.

And you're not far from Mountain View….

No. Mountain View is a bluegrass Mecca. And Heber Springs is always going to

be thriving because of the lake and the river. We have a consistent influx of people wanting to live here, people who have second homes here, people visiting here. In that respect, Heber is kind of insulated from what's going on in the rest of the country.

I love Heber Springs. It still has a sense of community despite the day and age that we live in, where people spend a majority of their time interfacing with people through the internet. Heber still has that sense of community where we interact with one another in small businesses like this and at community events. It's a great thing to be part of. A lot of people complain, saying, “Oh, man, there's nothing to do after 9:00 PM.” And I say, “Exactly.”

I call myself a “hanger on-er.” I like to hang on to what was good from days gone by. And Heber Springs is a hanger on-er community. They hang onto those things. I like to be part of that. I like little small diners where I can go in and they say, “Ms. Kathy, oh hey, I'll have it right out.” And they know exactly what it is that they're bringing me. I don't even have to order. Find me that in Dallas.

Our business is well-rooted in this community because we have consistent traffic—and because we’re just a magical little market on top of the mountain. I’m in the business of happiness. I sell food that makes people happy. I sell plants that make people happy. I sell coffee and muffins and all these things that make people happy. That's what I do.

What was it like to move from the business theory of a business degree to the real life running of a business?

There's the illusion and then there's the reality. The illusion was, Oh, I love plants. I love to play with plants. The reality is, I have to keep them alive to sell them to you so you can play with them and pot them and enjoy them. The illusion is that all of this stuff magically arrives on the shelves. The reality is we put a lot of these things in containers. We make the peanut butter and almond butter here. We hand dip every caramel apple by the hundreds.

It's a lot of work. There's a lot of physical labor involved. Unloading plant trucks for the plants that we don't grow here. And some of the plants we grow here on the property, but not near enough for the volume that we sell. Some of the food we make here, but not near enough for the volume we sell.

The customer service piece is completely different. You can't learn that in a college class. You can learn everything there is to know about accounting, finance, and taxes, but learning how to interact with the public and how to serve the public is something else. You really need to be comfortable interfacing with the public if you’re going to be in a retail business. I have six different types of blackberry jam, and people will say, “Which one's the best?” Well, let me come help you. Do you like seeds? Do you not like seeds? There could be something seemingly small, but there's an element of helping the people. And you have to be comfortable doing that and dealing with conflict. You're going to have conflict in business.

Like bad $50 bills. Or a plant that somebody says, “Oh, this plant died. I took it home and it died.” Well, did you water it? Because it was perfect when it left here. “Well, I watered it once this week.” It has to get watered twice a day in these temperatures. And then you deal with that.

I was overwhelmed at first. I think anybody would be, if they're honest. It was very overwhelming trying to do the back end, which is the paperwork side of things.

And I'm also trying to cover the front end because I am naturally extroverted and my wheelhouse is interfacing with the public, even though I have a business degree. But I was trying to do it all.

And I learned that I had to delegate certain tasks, because I couldn’t keep all the plates spinning myself. So I have some wonderful women here who do a whole lot of the laboring, and that's freed me up to pursue other locations and other business endeavors. We also own Pickles Gap Village in Conway.

So I've been doing this for a decade now and I've learned a lot. I just spoke at an entrepreneurial leadership conference in Conway, and I would've never thought anybody would approach me about doing that. And I thought, I guess I do have a lot to share. I guess I do.

Let me go back to your music for a minute—do you sing?

I do.

What's your favorite Eagles song to sing?

 Oh gosh. That's hard. I love all of them. If you're going to make me pick one, I love “Tequila Sunrise.” But I want to pick six.

Okay, pick six.

 My favorite one is probably “Already Gone,” because my son plays the lead and just smokes it. It is note for note. And that song is so fun to play. What about you? What's your favorite Eagles tune?

I love “Lyin’ Eyes.” And “Desperado...and….

“Desperado” is one of my favorites to sing. We also do “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Peaceful, Easy Feeling,” “Take It to the Limit.” I'm a big fan of storytelling in songwriting, and the Eagles have some great ones. We do “Hotel California,” which may be my favorite because of the lead work in it. We do eight or ten Eagles songs. When we break into “Take It Easy,” everybody’s singing along: "I’m a-standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona…."

"It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowin’ down to take a look at me!"

I wish my husband was here right now. He’s out in the greenhouse, or he’d grab his guitar and we’d sing some for you. We just did a big show out at the Red Apple on Eden Isle. You’ll have to come back.