Downtown store 'inspires' wholesome food fans
Jul. 13—Inspire Farms, Tiffiny Lilley's thriving organic food and feed business, is really just a homeschool project gone bad.
Monty and Blondie, the black and tan chickens roaming the floor of her downtown Mesa shop? A would-be science project for her kids.
"I thought 'great! Cycle of life,'" Lilley said. "Learn how to grown your own food.' Just lots of lessons, right? Well, after one year they could care less. They weren't into chickens anymore and here we are 16 years later and I still love chickens."
Monty and Blondie are long forgotten classroom-examples-turned store- mascots. They seem happy wandering the store's gray tile floors, making their way through a maze of shelves, products and people, basking in the attention of picture snapping customers and pecking at the floor for seeds or other goodies.
Inspire Farms is a cozy shop in the former U.S. Auto building on East Main Street in downtown Mesa.
With its homey feel and a bit of a laid-back, hippie vibe, the place feels like a throwback to simpler times, even though the sleek and ultra-modern light rail whizzes by just a few steps outside the front door.
"We have a 50-50 market," Lilley said. "50-percent of our customers have farm animals and chickens and need to feed them and the other 50-percent want what the animals' produce or don't want the animals or can't have them.
"We've got chicken eggs, duck eggs, turkey eggs, quail eggs. All corn, free, soy free organic fed. We have raw milk, raw butter, raw cheese, refrigerator pickles, grass fed beef, Berkshire pork and corn free, soy free organic chicken meat."
The list, it would seem, goes on.
The pandemic that devastated the world economy?
"It was a good thing for me," she said. "My husband's business went down to zero and my business skyrocketed."
Lilley and her husband Van Curry stared down the barrel of the pandemic. Van's stalled trade show business, with its bulky signs and exhibits taking up space in his idle warehouse, were a perfect opportunity for them to grow Tiffiny's home-based business into a full-blown bricks and mortar operation.
Now she has a place to store her product, which is in ever-increasing demand. Win-win.
"He had a warehouse and a dock and forklift so it worked out for me," Lilley said. "We more than doubled."
Curry's trade show business completely crashed during the pandemic. "It's amazing how hard it is to get back to where it was," he said.
But Lilley and Curry have put all their organic eggs in one basket and, so far at least, it's working out.
"Everyone wants to know where their food is coming from," Lilley said. "What's in the food and if I can't get it where do I go? Well, the best place is the back yard. So, if you can grow your own food, raise your own food, collect your own eggs, you are in a much better position than the rest of the planet."
The shelves at Inspire Farms are filled with huge, vacuum packed bags of organic chicken feed, raw dog food, bales of hay, local honey and lots of other corn and soy free products for both livestock and domesticated animals.
The refrigerators are full of raw milk, cream, cheese, goat butter and organic eggs, all raised corn and soy free. There are chicken cages, coups, pens and "advice," Lilley said, for people trying to get into the organic lifestyle.
"People were having a hard time," Curry said. "They wanted to be able to have their own food at home. They don't want to have to count on the idea that I may have to go through a grocery store that may or may not have their doors open."
Lilley added, "I think that is the difference between us and other chicken stores is that we actually want to help you succeed. We will answer your questions and make sure that you are on the right path to making it work. I always tell people if you get hung up, give me a call. We've made a lot of good friends. We know many of them by name."
The relationships have expanded to include fellow Mesa businesspeople on Main Street who tell Lilley that she has one thing that no other Mesa business can possibly compete with.
"You have chickens," they tell her. "A lot of people stop by to say 'hi' to Monty."
It's hard to miss Inspire Farms between Center Street and Horne. There is a huge mural on one side of the adjacent building next to the parking lot depicting a farm scene, replete with oversize flowers, stick figure chickens, a barn and a huge sun.
"We are one flower away from having that mural done," Lilley said. The shop is visible and invested in the community in other ways, too. Inspire Farms holds story time for kids on Thursdays from 10-10:25 a.m. and music classes from 10:30-11:30 a.m. We try to keep everything super local," Lilley said.
Information: inspirefarms.com, 480-684-2779
