About Bentonville Roots & Fruits…

Let me tell you a little bit about what this whole “Roots & Fruits” thing is all about.

First, let me introduce myself. I’m Jessica Mathews, and I’m a writer. My day job is a senior reporter at Fortune Magazine, where I write about and investigate public and private companies, and the people who run them—companies like Tesla, General Motors, Charles Schwab, or Vanguard.

But this blog is completely different. This is my little space on the internet to tell stories about people and local businesses you may not have heard of before in the town I call home: Bentonville.

How did I end up here? In 2020 during COVID, I spontaneously rented an Airbnb in this little city—with its thoughtful people, its small farms, and its irresistible biking culture. Two weeks in, I convinced my editor to let me leave New York City, I packed up all my stuff, and moved here. I knew one person—a stranger I had met at Bike Rack Brewing. Now I have a dog, a backyard, and four bikes, and I’m the definition of the gentrification problem that all the people on Reddit keep complaining about (sorry!).

This move shifted my perspective on a lot of things. It encouraged me to slow down, unplug, and learn how to disappear into nature. But it also helped me understand what it really means to be part of a community.

We tend to think about places we want to live in terms of what they can do for us: What is there to do and eat? How can I be entertained? What can I get out of this place?

Culturally, that’s just not the mindset here. When a tornado razes down a neighborhood, people offer spare rooms in their house and climb onto each others’ roofs to help fix them. When a refugee family moves into town, people welcome them and volunteers stock their homes with furniture and supplies. People invite you to dinner at their homes, to tag along on bike rides, or embark on camping trips before they even know much about you. This place is far from perfect, but that’s been my experience, anyway.

There’s a surprising number of people I’ve met here in Bentonville who are obsessed with making things. Some of them have really big ideas they hope to scale. Others aren’t interested in that at all—they want to create something with their own hands because that’s the part of the whole process that lights them up inside. People complain about Bentonville feeling fabricated—like it’s a city straight off the Truman show that is wholly funded by “Walmart” and “Walton” money. And, sure, there’s a degree of truth to that. But I’m not convinced yet that money can create spirit. And it’s the people here—the farmers, the small business owners, the librarians, the bike part hoarders, the wine or cheese shop owners—who make up the cultural fabric of this place, who are pushing the boundaries of what it means to be excellent.

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that people wield the most influence in their own community. It’s important that we know one another, that we recognize each other’s faces and names. Places like the Farmer’s Market or the Meteor aren’t just places to buy something—it’s where we gather, meet, listen, debate, laugh, tell stories, and learn from each other. It’s where we and our families are known.

So this will be my space where I can introduce you to some of the people I’ve met along the way. They’ve inspired me and made me think differently about how my food is grown, what I want to read, and what it really costs to build or sew something the right way. Maybe you’ll recognize a few of the faces featured here (or most of them) already. But I hope you can learn a little more about them in this blog: Where they come from, what drives them, the things that almost broke them. And why they’ve bothered to spend so much energy growing or making things with their own hands when it’s becoming more and more difficult to make a living by doing so.

None of these stories have been paid for. This is a passion project, and these are the stories I simply felt should be told.

So thank you for reading. And don’t hesitate to reach out and say hello. I’d love to hear your recommendations of people I should meet. And please feel free to send your hot takes about gentrification, new apartment complexes, and surging water bills.

Disclaimer: No, this post was not written by AI. But I did use Grok to generate the logo. It doesn’t look very good so I’ll probably eventually change it.