- [Announcer] Production funding for "Making it up North" is provided by the citizens of Minnesota through the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

- [Josh] This is the spice of life.

My product is not like anything else that's out there.

- [Giselle] I always thought, "Wouldn't be fun to have like a vegan restaurant, but not advertise as vegan."

- [Melanie] I want to extinguish the elitism behind plant-based food.

- [Desiree] We want to have fun.

We want to make money, but we also want to create change.

(upbeat music) - I always thought, "Wouldn't it be fun to have like a vegan restaurant, but not advertise as vegan because people getting scared of the word vegan, but if you don't tell them and you just serve them a meal, they're like, wow, this is amazing.

Like, "Oh did you know, like there's no animal products in this.

Like you don't have to have meat or have meat as your only source of protein and have it three times a day.

You know, you can make delicious meals out of nuts, seeds and veggies and greens.

Sometimes it tastes even better."

- We're from California and there're smoothie places, juice shops all around.

And so when we were here living together, we just thought of the plan of why don't we bring a little California spice to Deluth.

- When we first started, it was just for fun and we loved doing it.

And we wanted, at the time "The Juice Pharm" to be like our kitchen and everyone like just come in here.

We were just pleasing everyone.

We weren't even thinking of our future.

- When we started, it was a hustle and we look back and we were just blown away.

Why didn't we quit?

Why didn't we give up?

That was, that was crazy.

But to see where it's at now, I'm so happy we hung in there.

(blender whirring) - We started really small.

We took baby steps to grow our business.

If you're nervous getting in huge debt like I am, like take small steps.

You can make a lot of, you can grow your business slowly, but there's just using a lot of the help that's available in Duluth.

- We've been friends for years, for 10 years, and she married my brother and it's now a family business.

And these are the restaurants I've always gravitated towards when I travel or even locally.

And that's us.

And so when something, if an employee doesn't show up, her mom comes in, and then my mom comes in and takes an order, or my brother helps.

That's our magic here and it is, it's special.

- So we're both co-owners.

We both get 50/50.

We both do everything.

We are dishwashers, we're plumbers, we're cooks, we're juicers, we both do it all.

- [Desiree] We make smoothies, acai bowls and juices.

- [Giselle] We serve fresh raw juice.

We use a cold press machine and take like five pounds of mixed fruits, veggies, greens, and juices it to a nice little 16 ounce juice that's just packed with nutrients.

And then all of our food is vegan.

And during the summer, a lot of our ingredients are from local farmers, which is so much fun, we're just, we love it.

They just come and drop off a lot of whatever they have we take and we just get creative.

And so, and then the winter, we have more soups and like heartier meals, but everything is vegan and we try and make it as nutrient-dense as possible.

- [Desiree] It formerly was named "The Juice Pharm."

Now it's, we rebranded to "The Pharm" and that's because we extended our kitchen.

We moved to this location to have a bigger kitchen.

We can pump out more food and have more grab-and-go meals for everyone that comes in.

- So we moved here, have a huge dining area.

Then our grand opening was set in March and then COVID happened.

So we've been more of a grab-and-go place now.

Making it to me means being able to love what you do.

- Giselle and I've always coached each other that we'll get through and no matter what we have our family, so let's just keep our heads up high and there's no failing.

- To be able to be happy going into work, that means more to me than if I'm able to like afford a nice car or anything like that.

It's like, I love just coming to work, doing what I do.

- It's not a lot of work when you love what you're doing.

And I love this.

It's great.

It's what I wanna do forever.

- I grew up on a small dairy farm in West Central Wisconsin.

And I spent my summers playing out in the pasture, out in the woods, gardening, picking berries, all of those, you know, things you'd do as a farm kid.

And my love of plants came from gardening and exploring.

I distinctly remember working in the garden and loving everything to do with it.

What I do for a living is fermenting and foraging.

That's my thing.

I forage for whatever needs local businesses have, primarily breweries for fruit, spruce tips.

Like right now I'm picking aronia, plums, grapes and possibly crab apples and pears.

Yeah, let's go take a look at some grapes.

If people don't know me, what they see immediately is my wheels and assume that, people assume that people in wheelchairs, you know, aren't really physical or really capable of doing a lot of things.

That's a nice mass of fruit right there.

Gotta snack as you go.

I see myself as an able-bodied cripple.

That term has for a long time been considered derogatory.

In my opinion, it's all in the context of how you're using it.

But what people think of as a cripple is someone who's physically unable to do anything.

Well, you know, I'm paralyzed from the chest down, but I am more than capable of doing a lot of things.

And I generally try to stay as active as possible.

I should mention that we are in the Hillside Public Orchard on Central Hillside.

So I know what these cultivars are because I help the choir and plant them.

So they're pretty consistent with the nice big clusters of fruit.

Last year it was around 900 pounds of grapes.

This year I believe it'll be between four and 500 pounds.

It all depends on how productive things are and what businesses want.

My product is called "Gitche Gumee Kimchi," and that includes two kinds of sauerkraut, green kraut and peppered purple kraut with kohlrabi.

Then the three kinds of kimchi I make are my original, curry, and extra hot.

I believe it's close to 2,000 pints so far this year.

That equates to approximately 3,000 pounds of vegetables.

That's mostly processed, well, it's all processed by hand.

I got started with this six years ago.

I was talking with a farmer at the farmer's market.

And so I traded a dozen apples and grapes to them for a couple hundred pounds of cabbage and other vegetables.

So I ended up making nine batches of fermented vegetables, and five of those batches were kimchi.

The mixture I came up with turned out really well and a friend who sells at the farmer's market wanted me to sell there and thought it would be big.

And so I started making it and selling it the year after.

Making it to me is getting to the point where I am able to have a business that's sustaining me and the businesses itself.

And I hope to be there soon.

And I use as much local produce as possible from whatever farmers have product available, especially into the fall.

Okay, so now, everything is in here.

So this is approximately 40 pounds of vegetables, spices, and everything that goes into it.

My product is not like anything else that's out there.

I am really proud to make something that's not normal.

And then an air lock to seal it.

And it will sit here and ferment for approximately two weeks.

And then pack jars and it'll be ready to sell.

I'm enjoying every bit of this because I can go to farmer's markets, talk to all kinds of cool people, and share the good word of kimchi.

And yeah, it's amazing.

- [Desiree] I would say we're eccentric.

We're different than what anyone has probably seen before.

- [Melanie] Our customers don't even not ask for forks a lot of the time, you know, I don't even know what they're doing.

They're eating with their hands, I'm not sure, but they're definitely our people.

It's a farm-to-bus food truck.

My name is Desiree and I am a co-owner of "The Pharm" and as well as "Mama Roots."

- Desi calls me the resourceful farmer and she's the aesthetic business woman.

So we both have our roles and we own the business together.

Rachel!

Rachel!

(acoustic guitar music) I think that the vegan movement is taking off like crazy and people are experimenting with so many different cuisines.

And so Desi and I, this season have just been having so much fun, doing some fake meat stuff, but like I did homemade satay and put carrots in there, you know, keeping it as whole food-base as possible.

So there's stuff in there that you would never think could substitute meat and isn't trying to, but really replaces the hardiness and gives you sort of a focal point of the dish.

So it's really been fun, just looking in the fridge and seeing what we've got in stock and making a menu based off of that and connecting with the farmers.

"What have you got right now?"

- [Desiree] The day after we'll have a run, and it's kind of overwhelming sometimes because we just finished a long day of hard work and then the next day we'll talk about the new menu.

- [Melanie] That wild ride of what do we want to make?

What's the theme?

Is there a theme?

Does there need to be?

Just stay tuned and it just keeps getting more exciting.

The magic is so alive.

There's an art to this.

My friend said it's like taking the sword from the stone.

- [Desiree] Mel and I are both pretty green on engines and old buses.

Our bus is 1980.

And it was hard to understand why the engine doesn't work some days or why the starter's not working, but we're learning as we go and we're asking for help and people will come forward and it's great to have that support.

(upbeat music) - [Melanie] Scary, going on the highway, I hate it.

So I like, I prefer the back roads and I wish we had a horn so we could just honk and wave a little more.

- We wanted roots in our name because we wanna talk about earth and what we're sourcing, plant-based food.

With that, Mama's cooking.

We wanted mother earth.

We wanted our customers to eat a meal and have a feeling that, "Oh, this tastes like my mom's cooking."

And so with that, we're just doing "Mama Roots" and Melanie had chills and she was so excited, she started crying and I was, "it's working well."

And then it just we've rolled with it and I'm so proud of the name and it makes so much sense.

It's mother earth's food that we're providing for our community.

- [Melanie] And then what do you want to call your tacos?

- [Desiree] Maple Chipotle.

- [Melanie] Maple Chipotle tacos.

- [Desiree] Does that sound good?

- [Melanie] Yeah.

- [Desiree] It's amazing how quickly we come up with new ideas.

- [Melanie] What did you call it, Desi, sheen bean?

- [Desiree] It's fun working together and so fast and communicating that.

- [Melanie] There's an issue between us.

It's a small bus.

We know each other very well.

We address it right away.

And if we don't, we know, and then we address it in five minutes.

So that's been really amazing for our relationship too.

Just figuring out how, how to get along, or why are you doing this first?

This order was first and what are you doing over there?

Why are you out there fussing with the extension cords?

You know, all that stuff we have to talk about.

And so it's been a really good lesson in communication too.

And so keeping it fun is definitely a goal, but when it's not fun, it's real and we deal with it.

- Oh yeah, it's a ying and yang business.

We both have a lot in common with job ethic.

We work very hard and I'm so proud that she is my business partner and we communicate very well.

- All right, thank you so much.

She's got such a good grasp of what needs to be done financially, where we put the cash and setting up the Square for the card transactions 'cause most people are paying with cards these days.

So I've relied on her so much for that.

And she takes over a lot of that.

And at the same time, I'm fascinated by accounting and economics and I want to get into it too, so we just are setting up QuickBooks finally and being a little bit more organized about everything.

And it's always a work in progress and there's always more we could do.

- [Desiree] Mel and I, both being frugal people, we set a goal for ourselves to come up with so much money on our own, which wasn't a lot.

- Desi and I both put in $4,000 into a bank account.

And so that was $8,000 of equity.

And we thought let's just work with that, you know, we'll keep our costs super low and see how much, how much it could possibly cost to start this up.

- [Desiree] Yeah, when we first started, we would change locations just depending on who would reach out to us.

It'll be at night, it'll be in the morning, but it's all fun.

And different locations just gives us customers, different areas of Duluth.

- We're not in debt.

And she already owns a business, "The Juice Pharm."

She understands the ins and outs of that stuff, but we really started this for fun, not to go in debt.

We just wanted to enjoy and have a good time and use this is a stepping stone.

- I'm constantly taking photos because I'm so in love with everything.

I love the colors and the flavors.

And even in us in action, you know, when Mel's sweating, it's a hundred degrees and she's scooping up mac and cheese.

It's just, you have to capture these moments.

It's just, you know, you'll laugh at it someday days.

Like, wow, we really hustled.

We're really excited to see what we can create next year.

And in that respect, we're thinking more to help our community.

- I'm really hoping that those farmer connections pay off for next year and we can continue to build those relationships and pay on time and have a good reputation and show up and be happy and be appreciative so we can continue to support these people who are doing absolutely the best work right now, feeding us.

- [Desiree] And I think when you do something you love and you're doing good in the world, I think the results, that's success.