Fruitful Frog Market & Organic Juicery is located at 114 E. Jefferson St., Franklin. Elissa Maudlin | Daily Journal
A new juicery and market aiming to sell clean, natural and healthy items is opening in downtown Franklin.
Fruitful Frog Market & Organic Juicery is slated to open in August at the end of next week at its new storefront at 114 E. Jefferson St. Owner Ann Buie’s mission with the store is to offer a way for customers to use and consume healthier, cleaner products.
Alongside juices, the business will sell a variety of products including farm fresh eggs, goat cheese and milk, organic produce, chicken and beef, bacon, goat soaps, tallow creams and lotions, lip balm, household items cleaner, vitamins and supplements.
One of the driving forces for Buie and her business is health, she said.
“(I) have a feeling a lot of us don’t get our greens in, we’re supposed to get quite a few in a day, and I realized how the lack of that for so long in my life had caused a lot of my health issues, and so I decided, we better start doing something about that,” she said. “And (I) just wanted to be able to share with people the health benefits and get them to realize they don’t always have to taste terrible.”
Still, some greens don’t taste good, but Buie found that when she drank them in juices, the greens tasted better. So she started sharing with friends and family and participated in farmers markets — including Franklin’s — and some community events around May 2023. As more people wanted the juices, she said she couldn’t keep up the pace at her house.
Since she didn’t have many years left before retirement, she decided she wanted to open her shop. To prepare she started visiting different juicers to do research. At the end of April 2024, she learned about the location in downtown Franklin.
“I really was looking for a small community that had just a feel of welcoming and that’s what I found here,” Buie said. “I’ve always enjoyed the look and feel of it, and I do also obviously know that Franklin is on a growth spurt, it’s really starting to move.”
Buie also wondered if Franklin residents were searching for another health food store after the Franklin Cornucopia Health Food Store closed down a few years ago.
She decided the business needed to sell more than just juices to pay the rent and bills, and with her background in vitamins, supplements and the natural health industry, she decided to offer a variety of healthy options.
“I really wanted to open just a juicery but my husband was like, ‘You really got to think about that. That’s a lot of juices and how are you gonna be able to do this if you just rely on juices?’” Buie said. “And I noticed in the winter that sometimes it slowed down a little bit … so I just decided, ‘Well, yeah, I do need more things.’”
The store will sell gluten-free and dairy-free items, and products that are just generally cleaner. She believes everything humans need to heal and be natural has already been created by God.
“I feel like my word is ick. There’s too much ick in things and in the food, water, air … just unbelievable amount of ick,” she said. “I just want people to be able to get the ick out.”
She said it is hard to eat clean because you have to work at it and find the items, and she wants to provide a place where people can find those things.
Buie also plans to give other small businesses the opportunity to make products in her kitchen at her downtown storefront for a rental fee. There will also be a meeting room available to rent too, she said.
In the meeting room, she hopes to hold informational health classes, and she said she will have an herbalist on occasion and a part-time nurse practitioner.
The most exciting thing for Buie with opening the store is sharing with everyone who is willing to listen and meet like-minded people. She said she wants the business to be an open and welcoming environment where it’s not bad to try something healthy.
“My mission is to reach as many people as possible to let them know that being healthy doesn’t have to be hard and you can just do baby steps and you don’t have to do a lot,” Buie said, “but it’s worth it to change your health, to change the way you feel.”
