OUR TOWN

THE USUAL OUR

“Our purpose is to make women feel comfortable and confi dent, and have more fun, and be fi t, and have a group of women to support them.”

–Chris Newport, president, Wheel Chix cycling club

When the wheels go o for Le Tour de Femme, a annual women’s-only bike ride that includes a metric century (100 kilometer), half-metric century, and 15-mile route Oct. 14, the local Wheel Chix female cycling club that childish joy that goes along with getting on two wheels and riding.” Newport says the group’s growth – including a 200-strong group of women who follow it on Facebook – confi rms the members will be there. Four years ago, the club was created to ride in the event, says president and founder Chris Newport. “It was an excuse to ride with other women,” she says. “At the time, I had a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old, so Wheel Chix was partly selfi sh. … I wanted to ride my bike and I wanted other awesome ladies to do it with.” It began as a group of iends, many of whom Newport knows om the her day job as the owner of e Endurance Edge performance center in Cary, and today includes 60 regular members who gather for weekly rides throughout the Triangle. ere are road bike rides most ursdays, o en easygoing loops through downtown Cary, and mountain bike rides most Sundays, o en at William B. Umstead State Park. To supplement the riding, monthly socials “are like a social and a clinic combined,” Newport says. ese beginner- iendly meetups are geared toward camaraderie. “We want everyone to experience power of female community. “I was a bit of a tomboy growing up, but I really wanted this to be exclusively women. Riding together, you become comfortable with each other, and then you’re supported by that community of other strong, confi dent women.” A show of support will happen this month, when Wheel Chix presents another bike event in Cary the weekend before Le Tour de Femme. Tour de Cove honors club member Lori Cove, who was struck by a car last October and is recovering om traumatic brain injury. Proceeds om the 2.5-mile walk and 20 or 50 mile bike rides help Cove’s family pay for medical expenses. “Now it’s our turn to focus on riding safer and riding smarter, both as drivers and as cyclists. … is group has been an evolution.” –J.A.

Chris Newport, second from right, leads Wheel Chix cyclists (from left to right) Robin Baxter, Cassie Ramm, Sarah Zumbrum, and Natalie Lew on a ride through Cary.

Our Town GAME PLAN

“We want to find people that we can pour into here, and to contribute to the art culture as it grows.”

–Louis Carr, painter and co-founder, East Oaks Studio

Painters (left to right) Louis Carr, Joshua LaRock, and Michael Klein pose in their work space.

Contemporary realist painters Louis Carr, Michael Klein, and Joshua LaRock straddle the line between traditional art and popular culture. The trio – none of them North Carolina natives – opened East Oaks Studio in a historic mill building on Dawson Street in April. “We have a common vision about what we’re trying to do,” says LaRock. Namely: create a gallery, workshop, studio, and gathering space that welcomes the public, teaches them to paint, and celebrates their work. “There’s a high demand here, we’ve found,” LaRock says. “A lot of people have come out of the woodwork who are interested in what we’re doing, and who want to paint.”

They met many of those folks through a series of online video tutorials the three of them put together. “Since Bob Ross, people have been making videos” that teach people to paint, Carr says, “but we wanted to create something that would provide quality instruction and also be something beautiful.” The result, described by Carr as “a marriage between quality video and quality art,” fueled a successful Kickstarter campaign that funded the creation of the studio. Now that the studio is open, LaRock says, “we can get down to the work of painting.”

The three men met at the atelier of the famed realist painter Jacob Collins in New York, and want East Oaks to provide budding young artists in this area the same kind of venue for learning. Their open-floorplan studio-workshop-gallery space hosts free workshops for beginners and paid workshops for serious artists. Each artist still produces instructional videos.

“This space has developed slowly, but we know patience pays off,” says Carr. They chose Raleigh because it “checked all of the boxes,” including cost of living, quality of life, and the strength of the cultural community. “This is the place that is primed and ready for us to contribute to the swell of great art.” –J.A.

“I want to give people an opportunity to have something beautiful, no matter

how big or small.” –Lindsay McMillan, owner, Flowers & Flour floral design and bakery

Ask Lindsay McMillan about her business concept, and she says it boils down to a good ol’ passion project: The Le Cordon Bleu graduate “just loves to arrange flowers.” When she moved to Raleigh six years ago she couldn’t find chic centerpieces on a frosted Mother’s circus animal cookies). During the week, she’s busy at her day job in the bakery of the new Sprouts Farmers Market specialty grocery store in North Raleigh, which keeps her culinary skills sharp. Much of her floral design knack comes naturally and from self-taught budget, she started a company so that she could buy wholesale blooms and arrange them for herself and friends. Combining it with her culinary training seemed like a good move, and Flowers & Flour was born.

“It’s still very small,” McMillan says of her one-woman business, if very small means providing flowers and desserts for events almost every weekend. Sometimes she does arrangements for a dinner party, baby shower, or bridal shower; sometimes she does the flowers for an entire wedding. Other times, she’s baking the cake as well.

McMillan excels at trendy nontraditional styles: greenery wreaths, flower crowns, throwback birthday cakes (one recent confection featured funfetti strawberry shortcake with cream cheese buttercream frosting covered in rows of pink and white practice; she’s briefly worked with Meristem Floral to learn a few tricks of the trade, and now relies on a friend at church for traditional arranging guidance. So far, Flowers & Flour’s nearly constant stream of orders has come mostly via word-of-mouth and social media. “People find me on Instagram! It’s crazy how people from all over find me.” For now, her home base is her home kitchen and a spare roomturned-flower-studio, but one day, she’d love to open her own store. “That’s always been my personal dream. But something that I really respect and want to do is to take time, and learn, and hone my craft.” The best part, she says, pun intended, is the opportunity for growth, especially in the flower design department. “I get to be creative consistently, but it’s not overwhelming. I’m not burning myself out.” –J.A.

“Customers have described us as a personal chef but at Panera prices.”

–Roxanne Bras, co-founder, Supper Meals meal delivery service

It began as wishful thinking among young professionals in 2012: A group of friends sitting in Roxanne Bras’s kitchen dreamed they could afford “having a local chef make our dinners (at home), like when our moms would make our lunches,” Bras recalls with a chuckle. She was living in Southern Pines at the time, stationed with the military and too exhausted at the end of the day to cook. Mealdelivery services like Blue Apron were emerging, but Bras says it wasn’t enough to have ingredients and a recipe delivered. “I don’t enjoy cooking, nor am I particularly good at it.”

The idea turned into a business plan, one that put the operational skills Bras had developed during her seven years in the military to work. In March 2016, she teamed with Dan Shih, a friend from graduate school who was working in technology, to found Supper Meals. After work, Bras canvassed for local chefs, and Shih built an online ordering platform and user-friendly app. Supper Meals became an immediate success, delivering pre-made meals “straight from the chefs’ kitchens to the customers’ doorsteps,” ready to be re-heated and enjoyed. Supper Meals quickly became more than a side business. Last January, Bras left the military, Shih quit his job, and they both moved to Raleigh. Here, Supper Meals hit its stride. “The thing I’ve been struck by is that everybody’s busy. That resonates. Whether it’s because they’re working, they’re chasing their toddler, whatever it is.”

Meals that range from $5 to $15 per person, cooked by local chefs including Mounir Saleh of Sassool and Cary-based personal chef Mario Huante, have found a following. Bras says her more than 1,000 weekly customers include professionals who need a few desk lunches, parents who want family dinners, and people ordering for elderly relatives. “We’re trying to make fresh, locally made meals more accessible and affordable … I feel that our customers are paying their hard-earned money for a service, and we really want to deliver.” The locavore ethos helps, too: “This is chefs feeding their communities … Somebody in Raleigh is making the food from scratch.” –J.A.

Ideally, the places we live refl ect who we are and what matters to us. Maybe they celebrate what we love, like color, nature, or art; maybe they serve as an extension of our life’s work; perhaps they o er a place to dream. is month, we visit houses and gardens that serve these purposes and more. “Home” means something unique if you’re an architect or a collector; “garden” means something di erent to a master gardener or a tree house builder. As with so many things, Raleigh has variety in abundance. Join us as we take a tour.