NC FEATURE Brothers Doug and Ryan Sprankle, with their father Randy Sprankle
Discovering Saxonburg By Bronwyn Wain
The small town of Saxonburg is home to many small businesses, ranging from restaurants and markets, antique shops and even glass-blowing. The close-knit community hosts many events every year, such as the Mingle on Main, Sprankles Oktoberfest and the Saxonburg Arts Festival.
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atch, a shop that sells products such as jams, quiche and many other foods and gifts, gets its name from how they prepare the food–in small “batches.” “We both had two separate ideas. and we met through mutual friends,” co-owner Meghan Pohl said. “I wanted a little plant gift shop and Jess wanted to do small-batch foods. She had the idea of starting to sell jam and jelly, sell it at farm markets to see if people like it.” Pohl and Jessica Brewster decided to leave their current jobs to start the business and have owned Batch for eight years. Brewster worked in restaurants in multiple roles, and Pohl worked for small businesses and gardens since her passion has always been for plants. Pohl and Brewster recall the struggles of starting a business and keeping customers walking through the door. Prior to the pandemic, keeping clientele coming was one of their bigger issues. “What we do is to-go food in small batches, so it’s helped but the struggle is always to provide a product that makes people still come through the door like on a regular basis,” Pohl said. “We’ve gotten
Doug Sprankle with sushi s tation in Saxonburg store
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Batch’s packaged food options
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better at it and rotating things, and just keeping customers interested in our business and what we’re doing.” However, both Pohl and Brewster believe the pandemic has actually helped their business. “I think COVID, that’s one thing that really has helped all of Saxonburg,” Pohl said. “It’s gotten people out of their bubble, and they travel more to smaller towns. I feel that our business has grown since COVID.” One of the other main issues the owners noted that has affected their business is supply chain problems. “The supply chain shortages have made me want to scream,” Brewster said. “I have messaged Megan and said I want to freak out because we set our menus a week ahead of time, but in that same sentence, because we change our menu every week, it’s easy to fix that. If I had a set menu all the time, I would be very unhappy.” With the local primary elections coming soon, regulations and government involvement are also at the forefront of these business owners’ minds. “I don’t want so much reach within my business,” said Pohl. “Jam and jelly are things that people usually don’t do in Pennsylvania because of the regulations.” Pohl also mentions another popular issue in politics right now: minimum wage. “The minimum wage thing is something that scares me because Jess and I don‘t even make some of the proposed minimum wage,” Pohl said. “If they make us pay people $15 per-hour minimum wage, that could be detrimental to how much we can get done here because I can’t afford to have all those people.” Another small business in Saxonburg, Sprankles Neighborhood Market, is fairly new to the area. “We just had our two-year anniversary on July 4th,” owner Doug Sprankle said of his Saxonburg store. Sprankle’s first began with Doug Sprankle’s father in 1998, and
