Before opening a brewery, John Peasley’s only experience with beer was drinking it. That was enough, it seems, because Grand Canyon Brewing Co. has become a thriving business with four locations in Northern Arizona.
Sarah Ann Lesslie’s journey with her chocolate business started out with her wondering if she had done drugs. She hadn’t. But the experience Lesslie (pictured) had at her first cacao ceremony, during an astrology workshop in Mesa, made her feel so happy she thought she’d ingested more than just chocolate.
“I felt like I was on cloud nine — so much so that I called the woman who ran the workshop and asked her if there was anything else in that chocolate,” Lesslie says. “She responded, ‘There’s only chiles and chocolate.’ And I thought, That’s it? Wow.”
“I had a vision for something that was uniquely houseplants and related items,” she recalls. “I did a couple of pop-up sales in front of a friend’s boutique, and those were wildly successful.”
Thomas (pictured) operated as a home-based business for a few months but soon realized the demand for houseplants was higher than she’d expected. That led her to expand to a brick-and-mortar
location in downtown Flagstaff.
Trevor Glauser remembers eating a lot of yogurt as a child. But not just the stuff you find on grocery store shelves — what he really enjoyed was the fresh yogurt he ate while traveling in Europe with his family. Upon returning to the United States, Glauser told his mother he liked that yogurt better, and she ended up buying him a yogurt-making kit from a garage sale so he could make it himself.
“It’s kind of been a weird hobby of mine,” he says. “As I got older, I realized there weren’t any options in Arizona for fresh yogurt like this.”
Daniel Garland Jr. is no stranger to Sedona or running a business in Red Rock Country: His family was the original proprietor of Indian Gardens Oak Creek Market, the oldest continually operated general store in the area. Garland and his wife, Monica (pictured), ran the store for a decade before transferring ownership in early 2021 to focus on their new venture, FreeForm Coffee Roasters.
It’s hard for Veronica Regueira (pictured) to talk about baking without getting emotional. For Regueira, Pampas Bakery, her Phoenix business, is more than just a business — it’s the way she connects with her Argentinian heritage. “It’s a very special and personal thing for me,” she says.
Lisa Lamberson calls it “a moment of temporary insanity”: deciding to join forces with her friend Annette Avery and purchase a bookstore in Flagstaff. “There was a downtown bookshop called Barefoot Cowgirl Bookstore that was put up for sale, and the community had a rallying cry to save it,” Lamberson recalls. “Annette was willing to jump in on the crazy ride with me.”
Christopher Hudson (pictured) has always known the taste of a good tortilla, thanks to his grandmother, who made them from scratch when he was growing up. As an adult, he sought out that same flavor and quality for years before discovering Benny Blanco Tortillas at the Gilbert Farmers Market. “They tasted just like what I grew up with,” Hudson says, and he and his wife quickly became loyal customers and visited the founder and owner, Ben Ramirez, at the farmers market often.
Beware. There’s a good chance these words will leave you craving chocolate. But not the leftover chocolate in your children’s stockings. The good stuff. The stuff you’ll find at Pralines of Prescott, a local favorite that was founded in 1991 and quickly became a staple in the state’s mile-high city.
“Over the years, we have expanded and changed a little bit, but we try to keep our small-town atmosphere, and it’s going strong,” says Dee Ocampo, the shop’s manager.
Reed Booth is best known as the “Killer Bee Guy” — a fitting nickname for a man who’s spent the better part of three decades handling bees and making products with their honey. Booth (pictured) started out as a mead maker in the 1980s, and while making the honey wine, he had the idea to keep his own bees, starting with a couple of hives near his home in Bisbee. At the time, most of the honeybees found in Arizona were the European variety, but within the next decade, Africanized bees, which are more aggressive, began to take over — and Booth decided it was time to change direction.
