Homegrown in Forsyth
400 LIFE
Fashion forward Local couple bring new business to Forsyth Owners of Casa Nuova greet patrons like family Laura Thompson makes a name in the podcasting business FEBRUARY 2019
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from the editor For this month’s issue of 400 Life magazine, we set out to find stories of people reared in Forsyth County but out in the wide world doing noteworthy things, and we found a few of those. Caroline Puri is in the midst of a successful New York City modeling career. Laura Thompson is an up-and-coming podcaster based in Atlanta. But as we fleshed out story ideas for the issue, it was hard to ignore those of people and families raised in this vibrant community who have remained and found unique ways to contribute to their home. Like Caleb Mathis, who in partnership with Puri recently opened a major prom and pageant dress retail store. Or Candice Skinner and Nathan Kennedy, who turned their pride in Forsyth County as the creative inspiration for a niche apparel line. And while the owners of Casa Nuova aren’t Forsyth County natives, much of their food is — planted and cultivated just yards away from where it is eventually served to their customers. Forsyth County makes some great things — great parks, great schools. And, as you can hopefully tell from these stories, great people, too. — Brian Paglia
inside
contributors Publisher Stephanie Woody Editor BRIAN PAGLIA Production Manager TRACIE PIKE Director Video Production BRADLEY WISEMAN Staff Writers Alexander popp KELLY WHITMIRE Advertising director nathan schutter
Taste of home
Advertising deborah darnell STEPHANIE MCCABE Photographer BEN HENDREN
Family gets back to roots with restaurant . PAGE 11 This magazine is a product of the
COVER STORY Couple ventures into fashion business. PAGE 4 FOCO GROWN T-shirts popular among locals. PAGE 16 400 FACES One girl’s journey into podcasting. PAGE 20
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Young guns Local couple making moves in the fashion industry with new store
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Caroline Puri, left, and Caleb Mathis pose for a picture at their new store, Flirt Prom and Pageant.
Story by Brian Paglia | Inside photos by Bradley Wiseman | Cover photo by Jimmy Johnston
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his is what the start of pageant season looks like for Caleb Mathis and Caroline Puri: it is a Monday in January, in the middle of the school year, just minutes before their new store, Flirt Prom and Pageant, opens for the day at noon, but already a mother is waiting outside with her daughter. Caleb looks up from the front desk computer. “Is it noon already?” Caleb says. “It’s basically noon,” Caroline says over Caleb’s phone from New York City. Puri flew up the previous week to stay at the couple’s apartment while she fulfills some modeling obligations until the end of the month.
I stay on the phone with Puri while Mathis bustles off to the back of the store to find the right floral-patterned JVN by Jovani dress that the mother had called about the previous night, and so Puri and I talk about how and why two young Forsyth County natives — Mathis is 20, Puri is 18 — are venturing into this entrepreneurial undertaking without any formal education (i.e., business school) and in the face of skepticism from the industry. And the first thing I learned is that this is all Puri’s fault. She was the one working at Bravura, the bridal and prom fashion bou-
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Forsyth County natives Caleb Mathis and Caroline Puri transformed a former bridal fashion boutique at The Collection into Flirt Prom and Pageant.
tique store formerly in The Collection, while a senior at West Forsyth High School. It was a natural place for Puri to work; she’d been competing in pageants since the age of 12, modeling professionally since 14 and directing pageants with Mathis starting in 2016. Mathis, who went to Forsyth Central, would periodically stop by Bravura to visit Puri, and they always marveled at the structure of the store and the volume of business. They also started dreaming of how they would do things if they owned something similar. Then Bravura’s owner announced she was closing the business. Puri and Mathis approached her about taking it over. “She was like, ‘No, no, no, no, that’s not what I’m interested in,’” Mathis said. “And so we were kind of like, this is not meant to be right now.”
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A year went by, and still the store was empty, and so Puri and Mathis called to ask about its availability. “That just kind of started the snowball,” Mathis said. Indeed, in March of 2018, the couple announced on social media that they were opening Flirt. Eight months later, on Nov. 10, they held a grand opening event. Puri and Mathis found out that opening a business is hard. They couldn’t move into the store until a month before their grand opening, and so it was around-the-clock work to remake the space in the couple’s vision. Taking inventory of dresses, which arrive at the store one per box, can be a physical slog. But the couple also found that they make a good team. Puri’s
modeling career allowed the two to make connections with some of the top photographers, hairstylists and magazine editors, and her experience in modeling and working at Bravura has given her a feel for the latest fashion trends. Mathis has loved the sales side of the business. They’ve drawn skepticism from some in the industry, they say. They’re too young, they’ve heard, or too inexperienced. Once, when Mathis was shopping for inventory at a store in Ohio, he remembers the owner laughing at him. “He said that it was his goal to run us out of business,” Mathis said. They take it in stride. They see their youth as an advantage.
“I just can’t even wrap my head around how impressed I am by both of them at this age. They bring a fresh perspective to this industry, and they know what the girls like.” Jennifer Abernathy, mother of Caroline Puri
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They feel more in tune with what their customers expect in product and how to create a contemporary store atmosphere, and they’re prone to think outside the industry conventional wisdom to promote their store. For example, when internet make-up artist James Charles recently released a new product, the couple promptly bought 50 sets to give away free with the purchase of a dress. Customers flocked to Flirt. The make-up sets were gone in a week. “I just can’t even wrap my head around how impressed I am by both of them at this age,” said Jennifer Abernathy, Puri’s mom. “...They bring a fresh perspective to this industry, and they know what the girls like.” The duo has big dreams for Flirt. They can see having more store locations and possibly expanding the store to offer product beyond prom and pageants. One day they want to work with Miss USA. For now, they’re busy enough with getting through the first pageant season at Flirt. “They’ve gotten off to such a good, strong start that I think they’re going to do great,” Abernathy said.
Caleb Mathis, right, helps a customer try on a dress at Flirt Prom and Pageant, the fashion store that he and girlfriend Caroline Puri, third from left, opened together this past November.
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400 eats Story by Alexander Popp | Photos by Ben Hendren
Casa Nuova restaurant
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Left, Maria Fundora, co-owner of Casa Nuova, sits at a table in her restaurant, talking with her son Pepe. Above, patrons of Casa Nuova restaurant in south Forsyth, sit in the restaurant’s dining room waiting for their meal.
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o o k i n g o u t ove r t h e i r 16-acre farm in far south Forsyth, Maria Fundora and her son, Pepe, co-owners of Casa Nuova restaurant, reflect that family and loyalty is grown out of hard work and good food. Over the last two decades, the Fundora family has been on a mission to serve the north Fulton, south Forsyth County community at Casa Nuova restaurant with traditional Italian cooking and an atmosphere that takes you to a simpler, better place. For this issue of 400 Eats, the FCN sat down with the Fundora family at their south Forsyth farm and restaurant to
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A bird’s eye view shows just a small percentage of Casa Nuova’s sprawling south Forsyth farm.
get a better picture of how they grew their Italian cuisine empire out of a dream and a gamble.
‘Let’s go back to our roots’ After successfully owning and operating multiple Italian restaurants in the Atlanta area for years, in 1996 Maria and Tony Fundora retired to their property along the Fulton-Forsyth County
line, thinking that they had cashed out of the restaurant business for good. But by 1997, a new idea had formed in the Fundora household, to get back to their roots and grow a restaurant that captured the heart and soul of fine Italian dining, right in their backyard. “We opened in 1998,” Maria Fundora said, “and Tony said, ‘Let’s go back to our roots. Let’s go back to doing a small place where we actually know what you like when you come in.’”
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One of Casa Nuova’s veteran cooks stirs a simmering pot of marinara sauce, made from farm fresh tomatoes and other vegetables.
She said that their idea was to open a local Italian spot in the developing area, with a romantic Italian vibe, where regulars could come in and be greeted like family. “We took a risk and didn’t know whether it was going to be successful,” she said. But time has proven that their risk paid off and even in the fledgling, still-rural area, Casa Nuova began to grow and flourish.
‘You control the quality’ But in 2003, well into the run of their success, the Fundora family again decided to take a risk and try something new with their restaurant, converting some of their land into beds for vegetables, to see what would happen. “We started 14 years ago with one acre, and said, ‘Let’s see how it goes,’ it [grew like] gangbusters. It did awesome,” Maria said. “The thinking was we could try to add some of our own produce to the menu ... because produce prices were in a spike and Dad was not OK with that,” said Pepe Fundora, Maria’s
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From left, Pedro Cortez, Richard Campbell, Maria Fundora and her son, Pepe Fundora, pose for photos at their farm in south Forsyth.
son, and co-owner of Casa Nuova. “We had some space and you grow your own, you control the quality.” In the years since, the Fundora family has grown that one acre into a fully-working farm that provides about 90 percent of the produce that they use on any given day. “Acreage wise, this year we harvested about 16 acres,” Maria said. “But there’s no telling how much we actually produced,” Pepe said. The Fundora’s said that they work through the year with a rolling harvest, planting and harvesting squash, zucchini, corn, herbs, greens and thousands upon thousands of ripe juicy tomatoes from seed to table in their different seasons. In fact, Pepe said that 90 percent of their produce is grown from seeds that they cultivate and grow in their greenhouse. In total about 90 percent of the produce used at Casa Nuova is grown at their family farm less than a mile down the road. “Being able to control when you pick, when you plant, enhances your dish,” Pepe said. In addition to all the vegetables that they are able to serve in the restaurant, Maria said that they can and freeze some of their heartier vegetables like tomatoes, corn, peppers and okra to get them through the off-season. And for vegetables that don’t do well in the freezer, she said that in the off-season they still source their produce from local retailers like Leonard’s Farmers Market and at larger local markets in the Atlanta area.
‘it is just not about the money’ On the outside, the restaurant itself isn’t fancy, just an Italian restaurant at the corner of a south Forsyth strip mall. Even on the inside, your first thought might be about the small rectan14 | 400 LIFE
| February 2019
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gular dining room. But when you sit down at one of their 22 tables, lit in a moody glowing aesthetic and accented on all sides with seasonal ornaments and arrangements, you feel at home. “This is an extension of our house,” Pepe said, while walking through the rows of tables. “When you come into the restaurant, it’s like you’re my long-lost cousin or you’re my new family member that I didn’t know I had.” That homey, family aesthetic extends beyond their decor, Maria said, explaining their goal is to make sure that each customer leaves Casa Nuova feeling as if they got a great meal for a great price. “Coming from where my roots are, I feel that it’s always better to give, to have a sense of community, to give back,” she said. “We have to make a profit to stay in business. But that’s, that’s just a part of our A typical table spread at Casa Nuova Italian restaurant in south Forsyth. driving force.” She said that while they might not reap the short-term financial benefits that raising prices and expanding could theoretically bring, they have gained a customer base of happy, loyal people that are more friends and family than customer. “It is just not about the money,” she said. What it is about, both Fundora’s agreed, is the comfort and happiness that they see their meals bring people on a daily basis, whether it be from a quick lunch of linguini with white clam sauce (Maria’s favorite) or the classic Italian veal ossobuco that Pepe and Tony lovingly cook together. The food, the ingredients, the experience are key to them. “I think that Italian food has a sense of family, and everybody wants family,” Maria said. “When you come to a place where you feel that, you come back ... we strive for that.”
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February 2019 | 400 LIFE | 15
FoCo Grown, community pride
“Seeing them out [in public] is the coolest thing. People wear them, 16 | 400 LIFE | February 2019 and we see them all the time.”
Natives start company celebrating heritage of Forsyth County Story and photos by Kelly Whitmire
What began as an inside joke among a few Forsyth County natives has evolved into a brand and slogan to match the whole county. According to U.S. Census records, the population of Forsyth County was just under 17,000 residents in 1970, which ballooned in the following decades to more than an estimated 225,000 county residents. “We’re both from here, and when people ask you where you’re from and you say, ‘I’m from Cumming,’ and they’re like, ‘No, where are you really from,’” said
Candice Skinner with FoCo Grown, which sells a number of shirts and other products highlighting the county. “We’re like, ‘No, we were born and raised here and our parents and grandparents. So it kind of got to where people were making fun of that and using terms like ‘homegrown.’” Skinner said she got to talking with longtime friend, Nathan Kennedy, a graphic designer and fellow county native who made the first shirt as an inside joke. “He said, ‘I’m going to make you a shirt,” she said. “Jokingly, Opposite page: Candice Skinner, left, and Nathan the FoCo shirt, he just sent it to me Kennedy, owners of FoCo Grown, stand with a collection of the T-shirts, which began as an inside joke Continued, Page 18 and has become a symbol of community pride.
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and was like, ‘Here, you just wear this shirt around town where everybody will know and they don’t have to ask you.’ So, it just kind of started as a funny joke.” Kennedy said he only planned to have “a handful” of the shirts made, but before long the pair had a brand and an online store to fill orders, all finding out through Facebook and word of mouth. “We really didn’t want to go into retail. That wasn’t ever the point,” he said. “They got pretty popular, and the more people that saw them, the more people wanted them. It’s just kind of steadily grown.” To keep up with the “homegrown theme,” some of the shirts feature designs include the phrase “blame it all on my roots,” feature an old barn found in the county and a tractor whose wheels are the Os in FoCo. “The heritage is very important to us,” Kennedy said. “My family — I’m sure her’s — it goes back generations.” Each shirt, and the company’s logo, also features a chicken, a nod to the county’s poultry past. “That’s what built this community is chickens,” Kennedy said. “Tyson’s, chicken houses, farms, American Proteins, it’s all chickens. So, every design has a chicken on it, so that’s the little thing that if you don’t notice it, are on all of them.” FoCo Grown is neither Skinner nor Kennedy’s fulltime job and other jobs, kids and commitments limit how much time they can invest in the side businesses, but Skinner said when it is time to ship shirts from the online store — originally the only place the shirts were sold — it’s all hands on deck for both families. Operating chiefly online also gives the company more freedom with following ideas, though the majority of designs are sold for only a limited time. “You put it out there, try to promote it as much as you can 18 | 400 LIFE
| February 2019
while the store is open, let people order them,” Kennedy said. “You’re not flooding the market.” The shirts are now available in a handful of local stores, including Planet Tan and Fitness, owned by Michele Charles, also a county native and friends of Skinner and Kennedy. Charles said the shirts were good sellers and that it had been hard to keep shirts in stock. “Most of us are proud to live here, even if it’s different now than what it was when we grew up, it’s a great community,” Charles said. “I have people in here all the time that are from places like New Jersey and a lot of other states that are visiting … I had a girl the other day, I was giving her a spray tan while she was here visiting her brother and she said, ‘I just love it here.’ I said, ‘It is a great place to live, what do you like so much about it?’ She said, ‘All the people are so nice.’” After a successful season selling Christmas-themed shirts, the company will reopen the store with a new design in the spring, and like all those made previously, will celebrate the foundations of the county. “I grew up on Bethelview Road, so I remember going down Hwy. 141 and it was a two-lane road and there was nothing,” Skinner said. “There were trailer parks and there were no grocery stores and no subdivisions, nothing. When you drive down there now, I think people that have moved in would have a hard time visualizing what that looked like 20, 30 years ago.” While having a lot of support from friends, family and the community, Kennedy said a kind of response from strangers is his favorite. “Seeing them out [in public] is the coolest thing,” he said. “People wear them, and we see them all the time.”
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400 faces
Laura Thompson Co-host of MuggleCast and #Millennial podcasts
Story and photos by Brian Paglia
Laura Thompson was a homeschooling teenager in Forsyth County and feeling a social void in her life when she stumbled into podcasting. The Dallas-native moved to the area in 2000 right before starting middle school. It was the height of fandom over the massively-successful Harry Potter book series, and Thompson was a devoted fan, so much so that she started working for MuggleNet, a prominent Harry Potter fan website, just a few years into homeschooling after attending North Forsyth High School for a year. Thompson became a jack of all trades for the website. She created content and moderated fan fiction, and when the website decided to start a podcast, called MuggleCast, they asked her to join the panel of hosts. The podcast was a hit with its mixture of in-depth analysis of the Potter books and banter between Thompson and her co-hosts. At its height, MuggleCast had 70,000 weekly listeners. It became so prominent that Thompson and her co-hosts were invited to cover one of the Potter movie premieres in Los Angeles and meet the book series’ author, J.K. Rowling, at a book signing event. Thompson eventually took a break from podcasting to focus on school and getting her career started, but she’s back into it fullswing. Thompson and a few of her former MuggleCast co-hosts started #Millennial in 2015, which tackles current affairs from a 20 | 400 LIFE
| February 2019
millennial perspective, and she just rejoined MuggleCast this month.
How would you describe the MuggleCast podcast? “I would say in-depth analysis and predictions about the Potter books when they were still not all published. Of course, at this point we are in a post-Harry Potter world where we have all the books and all the movies. “So at this point, the main focus is the Fantastic Beast franchise. We currently have two out of five movies out there. It’s been really interesting because it’s a different medium than Potterheads are used to. But it’s different in a good way. It’s forcing us to flex that muscle and really dive in and pay attention to all the details.”
How long did it take you to get comfortable with podcasting? “I still remember doing my first episode of the (MuggleCast) podcast. I was so nervous. I was nervous about my audio quality. I was nervous about my contributions.
“I was and still to this day remain pretty shy by nature, but getting involved in the podcasting really helped me develop skills like public speaking and just helping me to learn how to be confident in those cases, or at least how to project confidence, even when I don’t feel like it.”
how much time do you commit to the podcasts? “In terms of development and planning, we’re looking at a lot of nights and weekends at putting episodes together. Especially on #Millennial, since it is current affairs-based. “Given our current political climate, there’s just a lot of moving pieces. We have to stay on top of our research. We’ve had times where we fleshed out a story, had it ready to go, and at the last minute have it change and have to either scrap it or completely rework it. “We had that the other night, when President (Donald) Trump had his national address. We felt we had to be prepared if he decided to declare a state of emergency, so we had the discussion planned out to address that. “He ultimately did not declare a state of emergency, so that whole side of the conversation had to go out. But that’s just the way it is. There was still plenty to talk about.”
What are your favorite podcasts to listen to? “I go through waves with podcasts. I will binge listen to podcasts, and then I won’t (listen) for a while. “I love true crime. I am a big fan of Payne Lindsey, who does ‘Up and Vanished’ and did ‘Atlanta Mobsters.’ Loved those. I was really into Serial’s first season when it came out. ‘In the Dark’ is also a really great true crime podcast. “To be honest, most of what I listen to is true crime. It’s so disturbing but also captivating. It’s really gripping.”
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