Blue Ridge provides great opportunities for young entrepreneurs
BLUE RIDGE, GEORGIA—APRIL 2025—It’s no secret that Blue Ridge, Georgia, remains one of the top places to live and visit, with its miles of hiking trails, trout streams, craft breweries and great shopping in its quaint downtown. Makes sense that Southern Living magazine would name it one of the “South’s Best Mountain Towns.”
Blue Ridge is also an entrepreneur’s haven, it’s small-town hospitality and commercial successes attracting young business creatives. Here are several movers and shakers who settled in Blue Ridge and found the business environment invigorating.
Yoga Over Blue Ridge
Kaitana Magno and Jimmy Sutherland lived a vibrant life in New York City, Kaitana working as a professional dancer, circus performer and Off-Broadway immersive theater director, writer and producer and Jimmy as a professional tap dancer, percussionist, composer and sound therapist.
The pandemic changed everything when the Big Apple shut down. That’s when Jimmy’s brother suggested they ride out the storm in Blue Ridge.
“It was a big reset,” Sutherland said about leaving New York City and moving to Blue Ridge. “We came here and healed. It was the solace from the storm.”
The move also changed their lives. They saw an opportunity on East First Street and created a yoga studio, Yoga Over Blue Ridge, with classes in yoga, movement therapy and mindfulness, and host two-hour lunar events on the full and new moons. Sutherland’s specialty is sound therapy, what he calls a transformative power, connecting customers to frequencies, grounding movements, visualization and meditation.
“I tell people it’s internal cellular massage,” he said. “It’s like a guided meditation through sound.”
“This space is a huge blessing, changed our whole world,” said Magno. “Yoga is a path to healing and Blue Ridge has been a healing place for us.”
The couple works to transform lives through their services but they feel Blue Ridge has transformed them.
“There’s something about this area,” Magno said. “It forces you to come back to yourself the way city life doesn’t.”
Blue Ridge is growing, they acknowledge, but it still owns a small-town, close-knit feel.
“The town is blossoming but it’s still holding on to its soul,” Magno said.
(Yoga Over Blue Ridge, 3900 East First Street, Blue Ridge, Georgia, 30513; 917-723-8792)
Noontootla Creek Farms
The pandemic also changed the course of Emily Owenby’s life when it closed the University of North Georgia where she attended working on bachelor’s degrees in environmental science and business management. Since she also lost her job, she had to return to the family property her great grandfather Frank Owenby purchased as an executive fishing and hunting retreat in 1954. Today, Noontootla Creek Farms (NCF), about 30 minutes outside Blue Ridge, is a private farm operation and private hunting club. The business features four quail fields, two and a half miles of trophy trout streams and a sporting clays course that’s open to the public.
Owenby wanted to go into environmental conservation but found coming home to NCF provided just that opportunity. Her father, Greg Owenby, runs the business but Emily Owenby serves as operations coordinator on the 1,300-acre farm that includes The Mill restaurant, a pro shop and lodging. Since starting in 2020, the 24-year-old has instituted many conservation programs.
On the creek where trout swim, Owenby planted native trees and other plants to create a buffer zone between the water and the fields. This provides shade and encourages insects the trout feed on. In addition, the buffer helps keep the water pure.
“The whole goal is to do the best we can to keep the creek whole,” she said.
One of her favorite projects is the “small but mighty” greenhouse where she raises native plants such as pawpaw trees and milkweed to create future buffers between water sources and agriculture.
Owenby also serves as a conservation consultant at the Fannin County Chamber of Commerce & CVB and is working on the Commitment to Conservation Program, which recognizes, awards and encourages local businesses in conservation efforts.
Despite the abrupt change the pandemic caused Owenby, it landed her where she was needed most.
“It was definitely a good thing,” Owenby said. “Now, I don’t know what else I’d do.”
(Noontootla Creek Farms, 3668 Newport Road, Blue Ridge, Georgia, 30513; 706-838-0585)
Ascending Studio
There are locals and then there’s Valerie Messer.
“I am Blue Ridgean as they come,” she said with a smile.
Messer’s Cherokee roots date back centuries, and her family has lived in the area since those early days. So, it seemed only natural that when Messer finished her service in the Air Force she would return to raise her son and open a gym.
“I knew what I wanted to do, something physical,” she said.
But then she discovered Pilates, an exercise routine that incorporates special apparatus to improve physical strength and agility and enhance mental awareness. She opened Ascending Studio three years ago in the Willow Creek Falls Med Spa facility, the first Pilates studio in the area. She offers classes in both Pilates and yoga for all ages and every Tuesday hosts her “jam” class known as Buti Yoga, which mixes music with dance and yoga—even drums!
But it’s Pilates that Messer stresses makes a difference in a person’s body, whether they want to get fit or lose weight.
“I think everyone should do Pilates,” Messer said. “I love helping people improve their bodies.”
(Ascending Studio, 35 Trackside Lane, Blue Ridge, Georgia 30513; 706-633-8977)
Soulhouse
Like many Atlantans, Seth and Hope Loeb escaped to the North Georgia Mountains for peace and quiet away—although only a short drive—from the big city where the couple worked flipping houses. Hope had grown up in nearby Ellijay so they knew the area well and the couple were married there.
The Loebs bought a home in Cherry Log to renovate, but every time they made the drive they pondered why not just stay in Blue Ridge?
“We thought, we don’t have to escape, we can live here,” Seth said. “The weekend getaway becomes your full-time reality.”
The couple had previously worked in the New York and Atlanta film industries, Hope as a makeup artist and Seth an actor. They used those talents, as well as their experience flipping houses to begin Soulhouse, an interior decorating and renovation design company.
“Here, there’s a mindset of enjoyment so it lends itself to interior design,” Loeb said. “And I think people are looking for renovations instead of moving.”
The couple view home as a sanctuary, something they learned during the pandemic when they were homebound and renovated their home and created an outdoor space. They love incorporating the natural world and personal elements into spaces, such as the surfers and cowboys at Mountain Mama’s Coffee Lounge.
“It’s the idea of comfortability,” Seth said, adding that someone left a pair of shoes and they used that in the laid-back but hip design. “It’s that fun attention to detail. We want spaces to feel comfortable and not know why.”
The couple love their move to Blue Ridge, a small town they say allows ideas to breathe and develop, especially new creative businesses with small budgets. It helps that Blue Ridge is a safe environment to raise their children.
It’s a positive change from their early years in New York City.
“You don’t have to leave the state of Georgia to have a great experience,” Seth said.
Mountain Mama’s Coffee Lounge
At 21, Moe Stephens had $500 and a backpack when she set off for Hawaii. But she found her niche working at an organic vegan café, then a coffee company where she learned everything about the popular caffeinated drink. She even traveled to the Pacific Northwest, London and Paris to learn the different types of coffee and how it’s farmed.
When covid hit, Stephens shipped her car from Hawaii to Los Angeles and toured the country for six months, sleeping in her van and visiting a number of national parks. When a friend contacted her to help start a café in Blue Ridge, she made the move with her husband, who she met at a coffee shop in Columbus, Ohio.
“My plan was to move on when I was done,” Stephens said of the Blue Ridge consulting job.
“But we loved it here so much. I decided it was time to open my own café. I felt there was a need here for a community place that serves a quality product.”
Space emerged on the ground floor of the Blue Ridge Inn, but Mountain Mama’s Coffee Lounge became so popular the coffee shop needed to expand. A business on Main Street became available and within five weeks Stephens opened in her new space serving her premium coffee with house-made syrups and locally produced baked goods.
“People wait years and years for a storefront on Main Street and we lucked out,” she said. “We are so blessed.”
The space was designed by the Loebs’ company, Soulhouse, using Stephens’ idea of “70s coastal cowgirl meets Wes Anderson.” It’s an all-inclusive space, filled with friends’ photographs, family quotes and original artwork.
“Every kind of person comes here and feels comfortable,” Stephens said. “And I think that’s a reflection of the town.”
(Mountain Mama’s Coffee Lounge, 771 East Main Street, Blue Ridge, Georgia, 30513)