Greg Fox and Mark Schmidt, owners of Nashville Spice Company, with their 2017 Chamber of Commerce Business of the year award.
Nashville Spices it Up
~ story and photo by Paige Langenderfer
With just one whiff of their spices, the Nashville Spice Company can transport you to your grandmother’ s kitchen, a café in Tuscany, or even to a dinner table in Ethiopia. The 375 spices available for purchase circle the globe, offering a diverse palette of tastes for professional and aspiring chefs. Greg Fox and Mark Schmidt opened the store, located at 58 East Main Street on the alley beside the courthouse in Nashville, in May of 2017 as a reflection of their passion for cooking and trying new flavors.
“ We have traveled a lot and have become what you might call‘ foodies,’” Schmidt said.“ We wanted to invest in the community because they have been so welcoming to us … so the spice shop was a perfect fit.”
The first step in the business plan was to find a spice merchant and bottling company. Fox and Schmidt
20 Our Brown County • Sept./ Oct. 2018 located a long-time spice expert in Pennsylvania who sources spices from around the world, hand blends his own spices and bottles the product— all in the same facility.
“ This gives us the ability to give our customers the absolute freshest product available and the ability to offer a huge variety,” Fox said.“ The fact that it all comes from one source was very important to us. At the grocery store you have no idea how old the spices are, and they likely traveled to many facilities before landing on the shelf at the local store. We know our product is fresh, non-GMO and contains no MSG, gluten or fillers.”
The shelves are filled with every spice and blend you can imagine, from the pantry basics to blends from France, Japan, Israel, Syria, Thailand, Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Yucatan, and even a Native American blend.
There are at least 20 barbecue blends, 12 Mexican spice blends, six seafood blends, 10 curry blends, 7 types of