A variety of delicious lunch entrees are now available at Fancy Farms Market.
In a culinary expansion aimed at tantalizing taste buds beyond their famed strawberry offerings, Fancy Farms Market, located at 5204 Drane Field Rd., is now serving a lunch menu featuring a selection of authentic family recipes.
The decision to introduce lunch options comes as a response to growing demand from loyal customers seeking to savor the same quality and authenticity in meals as they have come to expect in the stand’s fresh fruits, strawberry shortcake, cobblers, hand-spun milkshakes, strawberry cookies and bread and homemade jam. As neighboring warehouses were constructed and staffed with employees, she also saw the need to feed these hungry workers.
“We always had a goal of serving lunch but my brother had to really encourage me because while we know desserts lunch was a foreign concept”, said owner Kristi Grooms. “My brother definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone.’
The lunch menu boasts a diverse array of dishes, each crafted with care using recipes passed down from Grooms’ mother DeeDee. From a savory strawberry BBQ pork sandwich on a potato roll to a refreshing strawberry walnut salad (with or without chicken) with Fancy D’s Strawberry Vinaigrette Dressing to a chicken salad croissant, the offerings are sold a la carte or as an entree in Fancy Dee’s Lunch Box, that also includes seasonal fruit, chips, a strawberry cookie and choice of beverage for $15.
The lunch menu, which was launched on Jan. 25, is available daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. but customers can grab a chicken salad croissant or salad from a grab-and-go refrigerator until 5:30 p.m. (or until they run out).
Grooms said that since the beginning of January her mom had been spending her days in the market’s newly expanded kitchen, tweaking and scaling her cherished recipes to keep their delicious taste while able to feed a crowd and training staff to replicate the dishes.
“Everything is homemade, from the special sweet pickle relish that we put in the chicken salad to the strawberry barbecue sauce we put on the pork,” said Grooms. “It’s not just making chicken salad, it’s making the ingredients that go into the recipes that give them that homemade taste.”
In an effort to reduce waste, the marinated strawberries used to make the salad dressing, which would normally be thrown out, have been incorporated into the recipe for the barbecue sauce, which was a collaboration between her mother and her husband, Derek.
“The strawberry barbecue sauce was really trial and error, one was too tangy, one too sweet, now we have it just right,” he said. “The first bite has strawberry taste then a minute later you get the tang and it hits you and stays with you.”
He knew they got it right when he gave a sample to one of his buddies, who tasted it, put the top back on it and then immediately undid the top to taste it again.
While they’re working to bottle the barbecue sauce, customers can purchase the salad dressing in bottles to take home.
The launch of the lunch menu has already generated excitement among Fancy Farms’ patrons as hundreds of sandwiches, croissants and salads are sold weekly.
Larry and Debbie Williams visited Fancy Farms Market with their daughter Ashley Woods and her son Ellis, 8. “We buy our berries and jam here, my son likes it on his toast and sandwiches and when we saw the lunch menu we decided to try it out,” said Woods.
As her son sat next to her, devouring the strawberry walnut salad with a strawberry milkshake, she smiled. “Everything is really fresh and the salad is very light,” she said.
Her son raved about the salad dressing. “The salad is amazing and the dressing is really sweet and fresh,” he said.
Larry Williams said they now have a favorite lunch spot, a place where you can sit on a picnic table right next to the farm where the berries are grown. “All their quality products are amazing and taste like homemade,” she said.
For Grooms, the expansion is a testament of the community’s support of local businesses, especially her regulars that visit every day for a milkshake or every week to hang out and chat.
“Never in a million years would I have thought this is where God would have taken us, I just wanted to sell milkshakes and strawberries but He had a totally different plan for us,” said Grooms. “In all we do, we want to keep things tied back to the farm, keep things fresh and maintain these family ties.”
Fancy Farms Market is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. It’s closed on Sunday.
For more information visit fancyfarmsmarket.com or call (813) 478-3486.
