Students turn to another kind of herb

Marketing students’ local herb business, SupHerb, sells goods at Milledgeville Farmers Market

Kendyl Wade | gcsunade.com

Tyler Opraseuth (above left), Kimmie Wingo and Cody Ivey, marketing majors and student entrepreneurs, sell their home-grown herbs at Milledgeville Farmers Market. Their business, SupHerb, is part of the Georgia College Entrepreneurship Learning Community and allows the students to experience the business world

SupHerb, a student-run business, is selling its home-grown herbs weekly at Milledgeville Farmers Market in order to gain real life entrepreneurial experience.

The students are growing the herbs in the backyard of Renée J. Fontenot, associate professor of marketing and lead faculty adviser for SupHerb. The group stresses being environmentally friendly through their growing techniques.

“We catch all our water in seventy-five gallon rainwater barrels, it helps to make it easier and saves water,” Fontenot said. “And we don’t use any pesticides.” The group grows its herbs eight above-ground garden beds.

“We grow rosemary, oregano, sage, basil, catnip and thyme,” said senior marketing major Kimmie Wingo, who is also a salesman at SupHerb and senior marketing major.

The business has expanded since it got its start three years ago.

“We added three more beds at the end of last year,” Wingo said. “We’re trying to grow parsley, cilantro, dill and chives.”

Due to the drought this summer, the new harvest was unsuccessful.

The group is also focusing on gaining new membership and looking at other markets to sell its products.

“We’re looking at a couple of options for selling them to restaurants,” Wingo said. “We’re also looking at a farmers market on Saturdays in Greensboro.”

The students sell their bags of herbs for $3 and they can be purchased in various conditions.

“We have both fresh and dried,” Wingo said. “We also have ground herbs this year, which is new. We originally just did dried but we grind them up and put them in tins.”

The business is part of the Georgia College Entrepreneurship Learning Community, a student organization that gives students an opportunity to get a feel for running a business before they step out on their own.

“Owning a business was something that I always thought about,”Wingo said. “So when I found out there was a entrepreneurship organization on campus, I joined.” Wingo, who is also the President of the Entrepreneurship LC, is not the only one in the community who wants to own a business one day.

“I want to open up my own business, like a restaurant or bar. I joined (the organization)to learn some skills on how to sell and run a business.” said senior marketing major Tyler

Opraseuth, who is also a member of the Entrepreneurship LC. The students are taking their profits and contributing to Kiva, an online lending platform.

“It’s a website where you can loan money to entrepreneurs around the world and they repay you after they use the money and get it back,” Wingo said.

The group has just made their seventh donation.

“We gave it to Manuel de Jesus to get the fertilizer to grow his corn,” Wingo said.

The non-profit organization allocates loans primarily to those who are underprivileged and do not have the possibility of a loan in their country. The Entrepreneurship LC spends its time in the fall on SupHerb but is planning other events this coming Spring.

“In previous years during the spring we had guest speakers, visited the Athens Entrepreneur groups, and participated with other Resident Learning Communities,” Fontenot said.

Supherb can be found at the Downtown Farmers Market on East Hancock Street every Tuesday from 3 to 7 p.m. until after Thanksgiving.

Posted by MarkWatkins on Sep 22 2011. Filed under Lead stories, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.