Primal food purveyor Bedrock Eats opening new Downtown location

A local paleo foods company enjoying fast success since its founding less than two years ago is opening a kitchen, market and café on South Main Street in Downtown Memphis.

Brandi Marter is the woman behind Bedrock Eats and Sweets, a paleo/primale/whole foods business dedicated to “real foods”: nothing processed, refined or modified.

Marter is quick to acknowledge the biggest problem with the paleo diet.

“It’s hard,” she said. “There’s no part of it that’s easy. You have to be really committed.”

Committing to a diet is hard enough for most people but when you have to make your own ketchup or spend $80 buying 14 different ingredients to make a mediocre brownie, it can be impossible. That’s where Bedrock Eats comes in, and where the former pastry chef found the concept for her business.

“Maybe I can help these people that are walking away, and find a way for them to stay with it without spending a gazillion dollars trying to eat this way,” she said.

The company makes meals fresh daily and delivers them by noon to clients who have pre-ordered. It also has grab-n-go kiosks located throughout Memphis where patrons can pick up meals and sweet treats while staying on their paleo plans. Because she buys and cooks in bulk, Marter is able to keep down the high costs associated with paleo dieting.

Bedrock Eats and Sweets should open in March at 327 S. Main, in the former Frank’s Market and Deli space. Initially, the Downtown location will serve as the company’s primary kitchen and as another pick-up location, but she plans to open café service and a community market this summer.

Marter has been operating out of YoLo Midtown’s kitchen and will maintain the Bedrock grab-n-go case there. The move Downtown shouldn’t affect her customers – which she said are all over the city – because most of them have food delivered.

The new spot will allow Bedrock to grow even more. The food is gluten free but can’t be officially labeled that way because it cooks in a facility that uses gluten. With the new space and production permits, Marter can ship her products out of state and stock in grocery stores.

Bedrock currently has four employees, including Marter, but that number will increase to six when the build-out is finished in March. The restaurant operation will add employees, as well.

The Crossfit Connection
Marter, 34, began following a paleo diet even though she admits to thinking it was silly at first. She is an avid CrossFit athlete, and saw extreme changes in her performance and overall health after strictly adhering to the plan.

Then she witnessed a remarkable transformation. Her father suffers from several serious health conditions including congestive heart failure and diabetes, so she decided to see what a 100 percent paleo diet might do for him.

“He went from not being able to get off the couch to not wearing his glasses anymore because his diabetes wasn’t hurting his eyes,” she said. “It became really apparent that the diet was important, not just as a way to lose weight or a way to eat, but as a way to heal yourself.”

CrossFit gyms prescribe a paleo diet to their athletes, and many of Bedrock’s customers come from the exercise philosophy’s community. Bedrock stocks grab-and-go kiosks at multiple CrossFit gyms throughout town, and the new location in South Main is just down the street from CrossFit Hit and Run.

But Marter said the business has extended past the CrossFit boundary.

“It’s way beyond just the CrossFit community now,” she said. “People with Celiac, who are gluten-free, whole-foodies and folks who just want to eat better have come around to Bedrock recently. It just works.”