Barefoot is ‘as Southern as it gets’

ELIZABETHTOWN – Bo Barefoot, local entrepreneur cracks a half smile when he says that his last name is “as southern as it gets.”

Barefoot and his wife, Kelly were awarded The Outstanding Small Business Award at the annual Elizabethtown-White Lake Area Chamber of Commerce Awards program held Jan. 25 at Lu Mil Vineyard.

“I struggle with it when people say we do so much,” Kelly Barefoot said. “I don’t think we do anything extraordinary. We just serve and promote our neighbors and God said ‘love your neighbor,’ and that’s what I think we do. We do appreciate everybody’s kind words and the award.”

Recently, Bo Barefoot, with time to let it all sink in and reflecting on the award said that he was humbled and grateful to the Chamber and the community and credits his wife, their employees and the community for the accolade.

The Barefoots became empty-nesters recently and after living and raising a family in the Raleigh area for most of their married life, decided to begin a bold new new chapter, moving to Bladen County to live on a lake and get away from the hustle and bustle of city life.

A couple that is predicated on “get up and go,” they decided to open a business in Elizabethtown and became the proud owners of the Barefoot’s Sandwich Shoppe at the Cape Fear Farmer’s Market at 106 Martin Luther King Drive.

“We started in the year of COVID, because our timing is terrible,” said Bo Barefoot with a half grin. “We started in late January of 2020 and we took over the sandwich shop. The town was gracious to us and we started renting that facility.”

By April, not letting a global pandemic discourage or stop them, the Barefoots started another business in downtown Elizabethtown at 119 W. Broad Street.

“We started the coffee shop, known as Barefoot Brew which is a staple here in town and we’ve been very blessed with that,” he said.

Nobody saw COVID coming or the pain and discouragement that it would bring, but it was before it crashed onto the shores of the United States that the Barefoots decided to make a life change that would take them head-first into two things they had never experienced. One being, of course, the pandemic and the other was opening their own business.

“We were riding on a Saturday, going to the beach with our dog in the rain and my wife had never been, nor heard of White Lake,” Barefoot said. “So we took a ride on Highway 40 headed off at exit 341 at Denton Grove and came down here and circled the lake. My wife was just infatuated with the quaintness and the kindness. We found a little somewhat rundown cabin and made an offer, and it was accepted.”

The rest, as they say, is history and describes the opening chapter of the Barefoots in Bladen County.

For the next year, the Barefoots made the trek every weekend to the cabin while their oldest son was getting established in the Marine Corp. and their twins, one graduating from UNC at Chapel Hill and the other from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

“My kids aged out of college and graduated,” he said. “Once they graduated, we had the ability to move down here full time in 2018. The transition (from Wake County with a population of over a million to Bladen County with a population of just over 29,000) wasn’t difficult for us because my wife is from a very small town and she grew up military as did I.”

The couple both hail from very small towns in North Carolina although they had moved to many other places there was a comfort returning to their roots.

“When we came down here, we fell in love with the community, the morals and values and we decided to give it a go,” he said. “The community has embraced us and we’ve tried to embrace them back.”

Barefoot has traveled many miles since being born at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina into a military family and a father who was becoming a “lifer.” The family eventually lived at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, and then got to enjoy a stint at Cocoa Beach where Barefoot said he had a great childhood watching the American space program launch, “in that golden age.”

No family is without challenges, and Barefoot grew up with some adversity that shaped him into a man who is compassionate and who doesn’t know how to give up when the going gets tough. During COVID when many older businesses were folding, many younger businesses were also being thinned from the herd. In a small town, with new businesses, against all odds, the Barefoots could have just retreated to their cabin and retired. It may have been easier, but for them, easier was not an option. Or at least, not the right option. So, why did they stay?

“We genuinely are engaged in this community,” he said. “It’s hard to explain unless you are around us a lot and see the way we operate every day. We love it here. I quit a job at corporate America where I gave up six-figures a year to come here. I’ve had to borrow against my own retirement just to make payroll at times. Financially, does it may any sense? Probably not, but spiritually and meaning of life and enjoying what we do, staying young and trying to mentor – it means more than any job will pay. Some chase the dollar just to chase the dollar. What kind of life is that?”

The couple, who had no experience in running their own business, although both were heavily involved in working all their lives were faced with new start-up challenges in a kind of foreign field and then the bottom dropped out for America.

“I think in retrospect, it gave us a soft opening,” Kelly Barefoot said. “It allowed us a little more time to grow and learn to adapt and overcome. Any business, even if you’re experienced, when you get that location, it takes a couple months to really figure out what’s going to work and what’s not. Also, if we would close the doors, that’s 65 young people that wouldn’t have a job.”

The couple had a determination that kept them faithful to their customers and to the community. They taught everyone who watched them how to persevere.

“We love it here, and we would not just abandon the people,” she said. “From marriage to friendships to anything, we are in a society where it’s easy to walk away. We don’t have a whole lot of quit in us.”

There are so many who are thankful for that backbone, including the employees of the Barefoot businesses who the couple treat like their own kids.

“I feel that Kelly and I are loving and compassionate with our kids,” he said, speaking about their employees. “We have a very different demographic regarding our employees. We have kids who come from parents who are professionals and make great livings. Then we have kids from split families. We have a young girl who recently lost her mother and she talks to Kelly a lot about that. We get to be counselors, we get to be psychologists, if you will; and we also get to tell them it’s OK and that you are not the cause of what occurs in this world, but you must be the change within yourself that makes you want to be a better person and a better human being.”

There were four young adults who were staffing the coffee shop last Saturday while Bo Barefoot was overseeing the sandwich shoppe and Kelly Barefoot was sprucing up her new endeavor as the owner of the “Barefoot Boujee Boutique” at 214 W. Broad St. in Elizabethtown.

Dorien Rivera who is an employee at Barefoot Brew and a student at both West Bladen High School and Bladen Community College said of the Barefoots, “They’re both real chill. In fact, they are really chill.”

In today’s urban student slang, it is a meaning of deep endearment.

“I think they’re very kind people,” Caleigh Phillips, a Barefoot Brew employee and student at Bladen Community College said. “They are very manageable with our schedules and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I really like working here.”

“They are very understanding when it comes to our school priorities,” Paul Osborne, an employee at Barefoot Brew and a senior at West Bladen High School for half a day and BCC the other half said. “Even if you have another job, they’re willing to work around it.”

“We call them our kids,” Bo Barefoot said. “And I tell them all the time, all we are is controlled chaos. But then again, that’s really what the world is. Always realize that you’re in control – and even if you don’t think you are, you control your thought process and how you react to what you do. I tell them that if they can thrive in this sandwich shop with me, a line out that door, the chaos that’s going on, getting orders right, all while being kind to people, being a servant, people will notice that. And our kids, I think they’re aware of that. They talk about it all the time; how kind our clientele is and that brings tears to my eyes. They also have the ability to let me go drill sergeant on them.”

Barefoot said that the two terms that are very important in business, in dealing with employees and customers are accountability and responsibility. He believes that this foundation brings success in life for relationships and for business.

“We have a good give and take,” he said. “When my girls and my boys leave in the afternoon, I hear them say as they go out the door, ‘bye Mr. Bo, we love you,’ and I will yell back, ‘I love you; no texting while driving. If something happens to you while you are texting and driving, you are going to hate me more than the accident, so don’t text and drive.”

Always the teachers. Always the caregivers. Always the servant-leaders. It spells success for the Barefoots who were unafraid to begin a new legacy instead of fading into the background with the one they had already created. It’s that character that has caused their businesses to help form a stronger backbone in Bladen County.

“I believe we make a difference here,” he said. “I don’t make a difference in Raleigh. I make a difference here. Kids come and want to work for us. We are so blessed and I think that’s part of the calling. I think that’s why you are led where you’re led.”

Barefoot speaks to purpose, to destiny and to timing when he talks about the new chapter he and his wife are writing for themselves and the community.

“To be brutally honest, Kelly is the one who, one day in Raleigh, looked at me and said, ‘the kids are out of college and they’re on their own. Is there any reason we have to live here in Raleigh?’” Bo Barefoot recalled. “I started laughin’. I said, ‘never really thought about that, but no, there’s no reason at all sweetheart.’”

Writing a new chapter is never easy. When you get older, it becomes even harder. The Barefoots knew there was something yet to do on the other side of the next page. They put their boots on the ground and began to adventure.

“We came here because we love the quaintness,” he said. “We love the kindness, we love the generosity of this county. Now, more or less, we started the businesses because we wanted to be engaged in the county and we wanted to give back. And we were also at that point in our life where we were empty-nesters, but we are still young enough where we are able to be on our feet 10, 12, 14 hours a day in our businesses. I think people see that and realize that we are trying to make a difference.”

With the sandwich shoppe taking off and the coffee shop becoming a huge success, another business was born.

As for the new boutique, Kelly said, “This is me. This is what I love and I’ve had a passion for a long time to do this.”

The couple has opened three businesses since 2018 and another business may be in the future plans of the Barefoot endeavors.

It’s a lot to take on, a dream born out of COVID, but Kelly Barefoot said that when both her and her husband are in “go mode” they are very task oriented and as she puts it, “it’s time to grind.” They are considered a power couple in that they help to partner with the community to make it a great place to live and they help to keep things moving. Although Kelly said that they are just two ordinary people, they have been given an extraordinary gift to share with Bladen County.

There are some exciting and beautiful things happening in this very small community and she sums it up as she said, “If you can understand why this place is so great, you just want to be a part of it.”

The Bladen Journal’s new web-based television show – “HOMESPUN” airs this week and features the entire interview with Bo Barefoot. You can view that program and gain a better flavor of the Barefoot passion and insight. Please go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUn944g9Xi4