Jeff McCarthy runs Breadservice, a micro-bakery and certified home kitchen based in Greensboro, NC. It started as a hobby by Jeff who is a baker and chef with 20 years of professional pastry chef and general restaurant kitchen experience.

Jeff has been supplying Deep Roots Market with his product since January 2022. He is a stay-at-home dad to their two kids and started teaching himself how to bake naturally-leavened sourdough bread during his daughter’s naptimes when she was just a year old. Producing more bread than the family could eat at home, he offered it up on the local social media app Nextdoor, and Breadservice was born!

Jeff is assisted by his wife Ingrid, also a former restaurant industry professional. They bake a variety of sourdough breads and baked goods for subscription bakes during the week (picked up at his home) and for Deep Roots.

Jeff stays away from certification labels; he enjoys keeping the business small and contained. He gets his flour from nearby Old Guilford Mill which helps him produce his Sourdough, Whole Grain, and Toasted Oat loaves. Staying community-focused is a driving force for Breadservice.

Deep Roots Market is one of the first markets he visited with his young family after moving here!

Congolina Farm's vegetables are grown with love and a lot of hard work – not synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides. Instead, they use compost and organic-certified products, and non-GMO seeds. To protect their vegetable friends from the cold and the heat in the field, they cover them with agricultural fabric, plastic tunnels, and shade cloth. In spring and fall, they grow snap peas, leeks, beets, spinach, chard, turnips, arugula, and lettuce. Summer crops are tomatoes, beans, edamame, cucumbers, lettuce, and arugula.

Beth and Ray took on farming in their retirement years and have been at it for a decade. They do lots of community volunteering and are affordable housing advocates. Beth is on the Board of Mustard Seed Community Health which operates a clinic for people without insurance. Many patients are immigrants and refugees. Ray is a Guardian at Litem for many foster children. They have worked at the intersection of housing and health for 15-20 years.  

Congolina means Congo + Carolina. There are several Congolese families that farm with them and have their own gardens mostly growing for people from Africa that are homesick for African food.

Ray, who grew up on a farm, saw some vacant land and a farmhouse in Browns Summit and talked the owner into selling it. He offered the space up to other families to plant gardens, growing mostly African foods for which they are homesick. One rule is it has to be organic. They decide how land is sorted out, provide well water, and whatever tools they have, and can bring to farmers' markets, feed families, or sell to friends.