Linda Hinson and her son
Parker Hinson standing
outside their mill.
Authentic, Antique, and Old School
Story by Chris Miller | Photos by Marty Bowers
T
here aren’t many dishes more
revered in the South than grits.
Whether eaten for breakfast,
lunch or dinner, or eaten white or
yellow, the meal is so much a staple for
Southerners, it’s practically infused in the
bloodstream.
Old School Mill, based in Stanfield,
knows a thing or two about grits.
The business, which opened in 1992, is
owned and operated by the Hinson family.
They grow corn on their farm in Endy.
Through the use of a 1954 refurbished
grist mill, they make non-GMO stone-
ground white grits, which they ship all
around the country.
“That’s really what we’re most widely
known for,” Company President Robin
Hinson said.
“We’re true grit,” said her son Parker,
with a laugh.
With more than 50 items in the
product line, Old School sells a little bit
of everything from cornmeal, cornbread
and cookie mixes, to cookware to molasses,
jams and apple butter to even beeswax
woodwick candles and lotion bars.
It all started with a vision
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Made in Stanly Magazine | 2020
“So it started as a hobby back in the
late 1980s,” Robin said.
Robin and her husband David were on
a date in Virginia when they visited the
Mabry Mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The grist mill immediately piqued
David’s interest.
“He had never been there and he had
never seen the big grist mill and the stones
and they happened to be grinding the
afternoon we were there,” Robin said. “He
was just fascinated by that process.”
So fascinated that he refurbished a
1954 grist mill, talked to as many local
millers as he could to learn the intricacies
of the trade and began grinding grits and
cornmeal on a farm the couple bought
in Endy.
“We gave everybody grits and cornmeal
for Christmas that first year,” Robin said.
The idea to start Old School came to
David in a vision in the dead of night in
the early 1990s.
He excitedly woke Robin and told her
he had an idea, and that “nobody out there
is doing this,” she said.
David told her he wanted to take the
authentic equipment he loved and use
it to make “authentic antique foods”
with pure ingredients: plain, unbleached
flour, whole-wheat flour and raw sugar with
no preservatives.
The family officially started Old School
in 1992. The name was a tribute to the old
Endy Elementary School, where David and
his father attended.
The Hinsons opened a small carry-
out only food store that served grits and
cornmeal in Endy in 2001. In 2004, the
family opened the Fresh House restaurant
in Locust.
“The original intent was to just have a
store, to sell our Old School things,” Robin
said, “but what we found was when people
came in the door they wanted something to
eat right now.”
As David was expanding Old School,
he was also battling cancer, which was
spreading to all across his body.
But he kept busy with the restaurant,
working on different recipes or inspecting
plates to make sure they were good to go
out to customers.
“He had too much to do to be sick,”
Robin said.
She said she believed David kept
working because he knew that time could
be fleeting.