(upbeat music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local, taste the difference, and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop, or visit GeorgiaGrown.com.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Community.

Learning, working, playing, celebrating, doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything from our wide range of programming, to our stimulating radio conversations, to our fun in-person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

- The fascinating and ever-changing world of agriculture.

Let's hit the road here in Georgia and meet the farmers, producers, makers, and bakers who keep us all fed and keep us coming back for more, straight ahead at the "Fork in the Road."

(upbeat music) ♪ I came from the mud ♪ ♪ There's dirt on my hands ♪ ♪ Strong like a tree ♪ ♪ There's roots where I stand ♪ Georgia farmers, artisans, merchants and producers, we depend on these men and women every day of our lives through the choices we make and the food we consume.

Their strategy and approach is always shifting, but the end game remains the same, results.

(thoughtful music) (upbeat music) There's power in change.

Sometimes it means taking one step back in order to take two steps forward.

Success can be determined on different levels, different timelines, and in most cases, it takes firm commitment and perseverance to succeed.

This week we revisit a few "Fork in the Road" friends who have either expanded or rebranded their business in order to grow to new heights.

We began in Wrens at a company whose name was synonymous for road trip pit stops, but has restructured to focus on the sweeter side of life, featuring Georgia pecans.

(uplifting music) Stephanie Stuckey has a love for roadside Americana, her family business and namesake goes back several decades and a few seasons back we featured Stephanie in her plans to revitalize the Stuckey name and brand.

But what has emerged is a little different than the original Stuckey's Blueprint.

- We are getting pecans out to the world.

- [David] Teamed with a great pecan partner in RG Lamar, the Stuckey's rebrand, if you will, focuses on the trusty and Tasty Georgia pecan and so much more.

- A lot's changed on the production side.

One of the biggest changes is we actually got out of the pecan shelling business.

So we acquired this facility in 2020.

And Stuckey's is a brand, you know, we really sell products under the brand to consumers.

We wanted to focus all of our floor space on making value added Stuckey's branded products.

So that was 56,000 square feet that was dedicated to the shelling plant that we've now converted to floor space that we used to make pecan log rolls, package our roasted and flavored pecan snacks and all the other products we make under the Stuckey's brand.

So that'd be the biggest change.

It's been a lot else too, but maybe that was the biggest.

(upbeat music) - [David] Stephanie took me around this new candy factory where we met a few workers, smelled some sweet smells, and watched the wonders of chocolate, caramel, pecans and so much more.

(upbeat music) - We are all about pecan, pecan, however you wanna pronounce it.

As long as you bite it, it's delicious.

But we also make cashews and we do some almonds, pistachios, sweet and savory.

It's our Hunkey Dorey Popcorn also being shipped out to the world.

That's caramel popcorn that has candied nuts in it.

This is Heidi who runs the packing line and her mother Tara.

And we have a lot of families here at Stuckey's.

And this is my favorite part of the candy plant.

This is the chocolate wonderland.

This is the chocolate team.

These ladies are amazing and they are hand lining up the dark chocolate.

And here they go in perfect formation.

They get coated.

And the enrobing machine, we'll do milk dark and white chocolate.

(upbeat music) That's the cooling chamber.

And then they're packing at the end.

(upbeat music) And the pecans are roasted and salted before we coat them in chocolate, which is a great sweet and savory combo that the palette is naturally drawn to.

Here's Ediana, Ediana's my dance partner.

She doesn't mind doing TikTok videos with me.

Yeah, if you pick these up right now, it'd be a big hot - Mess - Mess.

- So don't pick 'em up.

- Yes.

- As tempting as it is.

- It's still melty.

- I bet it'd still tastes good though.

(upbeat music) - [Stephanie] Here are the vasts where we temper the chocolate overnight.

- Oh yeah, - Yeah, right?

Wouldn't you like to just dive in there.

- Go swimming.

- So yum.

This is Miss Dot's workstation.

They come out with little tails.

Okay, so quality control.

Can we have two please?

You want one?

- [David] Yes.

There we go.

- All right.

Mm.

So good.

I think it's really important to taste test every batch.

- [David] Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Dot.

- So yummy.

Yeah, approved.

- It's a winner.

- This is our kettle glazed or a candied pecan.

We make all of the glaze in copper kettles just like my grandfather did.

And it's hard to improve upon some of these plastic candy making methods.

It provides uniform heat and allows the glaze to get the right high temperature that we need and sustain it.

- [David] And there's an art to making good caramel.

- There really is.

So these are the cashews, and you can see we just put the salt in them.

And you can see we're packaging, these are almonds.

We do other nuts.

The fun thing about our logo is this is my grandfather's signature.

When I bought the company back and then joined with my business partners, RG and Ted and Mike, we wanted to be respectful of the past but not live in it, right?

So it's a fine balance.

And so we got this original logo, freshened it up a little bit, and I think it's the right mix of retro, yet also fresh and modern.

It is pecan season, which is the most glorious time of year here at Stuckey's.

You can see we've got traffic jams with forklifts going around.

So all of this has happened since we taped five years ago, right?

We didn't have any manufacturing, everything was outsourced.

And now we make everything locally in Wrens, Georgia where we're one of the largest employers and we're a very important part of the community.

- [David] I love it.

It's been really neat to see the company change.

It's a old name.

- Yeah.

- Right?

That's been around for so long and it's almost like you've followed your intuition.

- Not just me, it's a team, right?

We have 68 employees, I've got several business partners and we all work together to evolve and figure out what our strategy is and we're constantly tweaking.

But the big pivot is we've gone from roadside retail stores to really focusing on consumer packaged goods.

We are now a manufacturing company that sells product direct to consumer, and more importantly, we do a lot of direct to retailers.

Anything that involves making and selling peons, we do it.

(gentle music) - [David] It's gotta be fun to watch this brand change.

It's exciting, I'm sure difficult at times, but it's gotta be really rewarding to see it start coming together.

- It is.

And you know we've pivoted mostly away from brick and mortar stores.

We've focused on putting the brand on products on the shelves in other people's stores.

And with that has come to question, how do we make this brand relevant to the modern consumer, right?

For the brand, I think we're focusing on two flagship product lines.

So the pecan log roll is what there's the most nostalgia around.

It's a super fun product line.

People love eating a log roll and remembering the good old days, but also just experiencing the fun and freedom of a road trip kind of in that product.

It really encapsulates a lot of the great things about a road trip.

And then the other is the pecan snacks.

We've got five flavors of pecan snacks in the market right now.

Pecans are one of the healthiest nuts in the world, and pecans are going to continue to grow as a snack food.

And so the Stuckey's brand is gonna be at the forefront of that category as a growth and offer customers fun, healthy snacks in pecans.

- [David] The Stuckey's of old hasn't disappeared, in fact, remains a part of the brand's identity, but it's the quality of the product, the freshness and superior taste of these Georgia pecans, be it raw or something smothered in chocolate that keeps folks coming back for the classics.

(upbeat music) Let's now journey from Wrens to Watkinsville to revisit a couple who created an all-natural energy drink that continues to improve and continues to impress.

(upbeat music) We met Clay and Phoebe back in season three when they were expecting their first child.

The mission was clear and so were the cans for that matter.

They wanted to make a healthy, all natural energy drink, not just for themselves, but for anyone who believed in transparency in more ways than one, in the form of HIBO.

- The phrase that we use to describe the drink is super simple energy.

Super benefits, simple ingredients, delicious energy.

The business actually started because we had family members giving up artificial diet drinks and they were really dissatisfied with the way that natural options tasted.

So from the get go, when we found out that that was a really common problem we set out to see if we could make something simple, natural ingredients and beneficial, but also taste was a big deal.

What you're getting when you pop a tab is you're getting amazing benefits, tons of vitamins, electrolytes, and antioxidants in the drinks as well as zero calories.

We're not using as a brand, any artificial preservatives or anything like that.

So one ingredient that we use in order to avoid that is hibiscus.

It's a flower.

It's got these natural organic acids that are present in it that help us have this really, really long shelf life in the can so that whether you crack a can on day one or two years later, it still tastes the exact same, still very fresh and still very safe.

(upbeat music) - The idea initially came from a few different places.

It kind of hit us all at once.

It was the combination of Clayton working with food science at UGA and one of his professors coming back from a trip to India, I believe it was.

Everywhere he went, there was hibiscus tea and it had this beautiful color and just a really unique flavor to it.

And at the same time I had gone and bought some hibiscus dried from just the local grocery store and was baking with it, started brewing a little bit of tea and we were actually making a lemonade with it for a little while and it just had such a unique bite to it and flavor.

So we also knew from that kind of tangy quality that it had that that would be able to replace any preservatives and it would really keep the product stable, lasting for a long time and really healthy.

(upbeat music) - [David] Now we continue the journey of this determined couple who are expecting a new buddy for their little boy, A cute little toddler who adorably loves HIBO.

- Mommy hug a HIBO.

- Thank you.

Loves supporting me.

- [David] Do you get free HIBO?

- Yeah.

- How much HIBO do you drink every day?

- Two.

- Two.

- Two.

- Two sips, right?

- Whenever we know.

- Yeah.

- [David] And they're also expecting to go great places with their new style can and variety of new flavors and ideas to continue improving their hibiscus space product.

- We've always been attempting to come from a belief of creating differently and that in order to actually make healthy options easy, we have to create differently.

People might brand things differently, but every single drink has the exact same ingredients.

They just brand them differently.

They might taste differently.

And I think what's really cool now is that the bet that we took was that people were gonna, on a large scale, really start to care about things being natural, wanting to get the artificial stuff out of their diet.

So that bet turned out to work out.

People have started to care.

And so it's really cool now full circle for our why being centered in creating differently and making each day healthier.

(upbeat music) 99% of energy drinks are all based with the same preservative called citric acid.

Now, citric acid does occur naturally, but the method by which it's produced is they take big vats of a type of black mold, not a healthy kind, and they feed it sugar and the black mold eats the sugar and outputs citric acid.

When we saw that in those studies, we thought, man, if we're trying to make a better beverage, we want to use something different.

Turns out it's really difficult.

Hibiscus has the qualities that you need to create that shelf stability without having to use any of these artificial preservatives that are out there.

The science behind it is, is that hibiscus has a lot of different antioxidants and organic acids that are present in it that give each one of these drinks a full two year shelf life, which the normal for an energy drink is six months to a year.

(upbeat music) So I've noticed recently that you're doing this all the time and touching hot things that I can't really feel in my fingertips very much anymore.

I'm not sure whether that's a perk or a or a bad thing though.

- [David] Maybe not good, yeah.

- Everything that we need, we extract from it and then we're actually gonna pull all this out and there's one of these containers, a local farmer comes and picks this up and then dumps it into the feed for meat cows.

And so it's a local guy here in town, they put this, they put some grain in there, they kind of mix it all up and these cows get, I guess you would call 'em cornmanials 'cause usually they're getting corn and stuff, but.

- [David] That's lucky cows right there.

- We actually recently switched to a new, little bit more local flavor supplier and very helpful in innovating a lot of our new flavors like Orange Dream and Blue Raspberry, and a couple others that are on deck to come out soon.

We got our staple flavors down and we're able to really perfect those and hone in on that.

And now kind of expand into some of the more, you know, summertime flavors and do things seasonally or limited edition.

And people have had a lot of really fun requests.

And so it's been really interesting testing those things out and seeing what works, seeing what people like and all the different variations you can do on a single flavor.

(upbeat music) - So essentially what's going on here is we've got 10 cans getting filled at once, a bunch of mass flow that keeps the product really cold.

Air operates all of these rams that drop the to line down that seam all the cans.

But essentially these get filled right here, run through, they grab a lid.

Every aluminum can comes in two parts.

So you get the body and then the lid that gets shed down in this chute dropped on top.

And then it goes through both of these seamers that use these rollers to seam the lid on top of the can and create an airtight seal.

This is still probably my favorite part of the business.

I love getting back in here and canning 'cause it just reminds me of the creation of this thing.

(upbeat music) And it's been a fun challenge to work on this for five years and to figure out how to actually make healthy ingredients taste good.

I don't think I'll ever be cool with not doing this.

- [David] It's fun to see success happen to good folks like Clay and Phoebe and their HIBO-loving son.

It takes vision, belief in a product along with an undeniable tenacity and hands-on involvement to make an operation like this succeed.

But I've seen it working over the past few years and can only expect the best in the years to come.

(upbeat music) Let's now work our way from Watkinsville to Brooklyn and revisit a family farm that I first explored over a decade ago on another show.

And man, have they groan.

I worked in a show called "Georgia Traveler" from 2006 to 2016, and during that time I ran across agritourism destinations that caught my eye and the folks at Hunter Cattle Company did just that.

(upbeat music) So let's buy some land and round up a few chickens, maybe purchase a pig or two and call it a farm.

Be it an impulse decision or just a massive leap of faith, in just a few years.

Papa Adele Ferguson and the Hunter Cattle Company have become the talk of the town or region in southeast Georgia.

- My family and I decided that we wanted to raise our own meats and be out in the country to raise our families and we wanted grass fed cattle.

So you have to have a lot of pastures to do rotational grazing.

We just feel like the Lord started sending us people to start buying cattle and we would be like, "Sure, that's awesome."

And then people were like, "What about pigs?"

And we're like, "Might as well do pigs too."

And they were like, "What about eggs and what about chicken?"

And so we just continued to grow by demand.

We definitely have learned a lot of stuff the hard way because we were not farmers before doing this.

- Dell is the big man on campus and Deborah known in these parts as Moo Ma runs the farm store.

Brother Anthony is the sausage making king and their sister Kristan.

Well, Kristan kind of just keeps everybody in check, including all nine grandsons.

That's right.

All boys.

This is Moo Ma's Farm Store.

- Correct?

- We got some eggs and we're gonna clean these eggs, right?

- Right.

- All right.

What do we need to do?

- Alright, first you need to spray it with some really, really hot water.

- Okay.

- Wash 'em.

Put 'em on the pad.

- All right.

Take it over.

We got a little assembly line going, don't we?

- Got it going.

(upbeat music) - Here in Moo Ma's, you can buy many items from the farm like the eggs, beef, pork, chicken, and of course the award-winning sausage.

So I've heard about the Hunter Cattle Company's award-winning sausage.

Well this is the man who makes it happen.

You ready Anthony?

- You ready?

I'm ready.

- Okay, let's go make this happen.

Right now, I feel kinda like a sausage scientist.

- We'll take this grind and we'll dump her on in and then we start the grinder.

- [David] Very similar to spaghetti.

- [Anthony] That's about what it looks like.

- Yeah.

- And then it's time to crank her down.

- [David] Oh, look at that.

Mind if I give it a crank?

- [Anthony] Watch out for that bar, 'cause it can't come back and pop you in the face.

- Once gets going, it's alright.

Woo.

Whoa.

Man.

Whoop.

- [Anthony] There it goes.

It's just settling down.

- Pretty impressive, except for that.

- Yeah, and now from here we'll twist it up and then you end up with sausage links.

- That's all it takes.

Nice.

- Well that's all it typical, see, that's what usually happens when I do it.

That's why I let somebody else do it.

- [David] So now I am a few years older, but my appreciation for farms like the Hunter Cattle Company have grown even more.

The youngsters of those days are all grown up and some are taking on major roles at the farm.

Sister Kristan is awesome as usual and working harder than ever.

And Papa Dell, he grew a killer beard through the years and caught me up on the past 10 years of impressive growth at the Hunter Cattle Company.

I was impressed then with what you all had created, but now it's 2025.

I am blown away by how it's grown and it's almost like the vision you had came to fruition.

- Yes, we saw it as if we were going to continue working as a family, which we enjoy doing.

We all love each other and get along with each other and we'll have a fuss here and there.

But you know, by the end of the day we're eating supper, but we have to grow.

One of the good things that we found out was to be able to grow, we had to expand beyond our farm.

We added on partnering farms that have the same protocols as what we want as far as delivering all natural and healthy meat.

So it's worked out great.

(upbeat music) - [David] As we've discussed many times on this show, beef turns out better when the animals are happy, calm and comfortable, especially the hours leading up to processing.

So what did the Hunter Cattle company do?

They went vertical, integration that is and built a state-of-the-art processing facility right here on the farm.

Keeping the cattle close to home, in turn, meaning minimal stress on the animals and the meat they provide.

- And part of our new building in harvesting the cattle is not just taking care of Hunter Cattle, our farm, but a lot of farmers around us as well.

One of the things that we're very thankful for in building our own processing facility is less miles that a cow has to travel and that that reduces the stress, makes the actual meat taste better because it is not harvested under a stressful condition where there are hours on the road.

We didn't know that we wanted to end up being a harvester on our farm, but really that's the best thing from start to finish doing it right here.

Everything that we're working towards is to utilize the whole animal, the tallow, the bone broth, all the organ meats that are very healthy for you and get all the resources out of it that our bodies need.

(upbeat music) - [David] Why is grass fed important?

What are the advantages you believe?

- You know, one of the things I like about grass fed beef is it's so nutritious.

If you do it in the all natural grass fed protocol, it is so good for you that you could live off of grass fed beef the rest of your life, even if you didn't get to eat broccoli.

Sorry, broccoli farmers, but nothing against broccoli.

- [David] It's good with broccoli too.

- It's good with it, yeah.

Had beef and broccoli this weekend actually.

- [David] There you go.

There you go.

- You know, when we first started producing grass fed beef for ourselves, we had people that would find out by word of mouth, you know, and they would say, "Hey, can we buy some?"

Well, it grew from there to selling to restaurants, not just even in Savannah, but in, you know, the state of Georgia and South Carolina and North Florida.

Also, we have schools that are using our beef, Savannah College of Art and Design.

High schools like Columbia and Cherokee and Bullock County, you know, and Chatham, you know, it's just wonderful.

Now, we can't supply a 100% of their beef, but you know what they do buy is actually very beneficial to the students and we know that that day that they're eating Hunter Cattle beef, that they're eating healthy beef.

We also produce hogs for pork and chicken.

We're limited on that.

But what we do sell, we know is all natural and good for you.

- [David] The store is still strong and the property has expanded.

This destination now hosts events and can serve up some of the freshest smash burgers you'll find on earth.

- We have corporate meetings out here, we have weddings out here.

We have high schools, elementary schools that bring their kids by the bus load out here.

We try to extend our farm into all aspects of people that have nothing to do with agriculture so they can see what you know, a true farm is about.

So that's what we do.

- [David] It's fun to see a family succeed, especially when you know the hard work they all put in on a daily basis.

It's a business run by multiple generations giving back to the community they love.

And now many communities far beyond, offering fresh, humanely treated Georgia grown products from their family to yours.

(uplifting music) So from chocolate covered goodness, from a longtime familiar brand to a new-age natural energy drink that's reaching new heights every step of the way to a now longtime family farm that I've watched grow and succeed through the years.

It's fun to follow up with old friends and share their stories of success with the good folks of Georgia and beyond.

I'm David Zelski.

See you at the next "Fork in the Road".

(upbeat music) "A Fork in the Road" was brought to you by.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Community.

Learning, working, playing, celebrating.

Doing life is always better together.

At GPB, we aim to provide you with the tools to be able to do life together well.

Our mission to educate, inform, and entertain inspires everything from our wide range of programming to our stimulating radio conversations, to our fun in-person events, we've got something for everyone.

Visit gpb.org/community to learn more about our upcoming events.

(upbeat music) - [David] From the soil of our family farms to your table, there's something special about Georgia, something you can taste in every bite.

Fresh flavors, local farms, unforgettable experiences, Georgia has it all.

Support local.

Taste the difference and make memories along the way.

Look for the Georgia Grown logo wherever you shop or visit Georgia grown.com.