The pivotal moment came Friday, March 20. A 10-year lease agreement was handed to Amy and Hannah Pickle to sign for Downtown space that would house their fourth Raw Girls food venue.

But this narrow, 805-square-foot shopfront space at 150 Peabody Place would be their first brick-and-mortar place with a long-term lease. The business has been selling for nearly a decade such healthy foods as smoothies, cold-pressed juices and plant-based entrees that are both raw and cooked.

“We just looked at each other, looked at the lease, and then look at each other again,” Hannah said.

Raw Girls and City & State will begin joint venture in Germantown

Such a commitment, especially in the middle of a pandemic and its economic effects, forced the small-business owners to take a moment to gather themselves.

“Let me tell you, there was a pause, a really long pause,” Amy said. “We were thinking, ‘Are we insane? Are we optimistic? Are we, what?’ ”

The couple – they’ve been married since 2012 – chose optimism, in no small part because of a special effort the Downtown Memphis Commission had made two days earlier to approve a $30,000 grant to support Raw Girls’ expansion to Downtown.

An affiliated board, the Center City Development Corp., could not hold a normal meeting at commission headquarters to review the application for the Retail Tenant Improvement Grant. Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic prevented a meeting.

So, the staff sent the application materials to each board member, a few staff members manned the conference room and all persevered through a teleconference with audio trouble.

“It was our first teleconference meeting,” Downtown Memphis Commission president Jennifer Oswalt said. “It wasn’t great … They couldn’t hear all of us in the room. But it was good enough for that first meeting.”

One sound from the meeting that Amy and Hannah could hear filled them with joy. They heard the “yes” votes.

“We had tears in our eyes,” Hannah said. “It was a very joyous moment.”

Amy said she was moved that the Downtown officials “were willing to take a chance in the middle of all this” pandemic emergency.

Said Hannah, “I feel like maybe we are all feeling the same way: Let’s stay with hope. Let’s say with positivity. Let’s stay with forward motion even with all that’s happening.”

The Pickles can use the $30,000 to make the kind of tenant build-out improvements that would remain with the space even if Raw Girls were to ever close the location. The money was the third retail grant awarded by the commission in an effort to boost retail activity in high-priority areas of Downtown.

“This was great because it’s an established business in other parts of Memphis that was going to plant some roots Downtown,” Oswalt said. “We were excited about that.”

Plus, a lot of downtowners have been asking for more restaurants offering faster, made-to-go meals, Oswalt said.

Raw Girls has long operated out of permanently positioned trailers at 5502 Poplar in East Memphis and 242 S. Cooper in Midtown, and more recently in a pop-up shopfront in Germantown’s Saddle Creek at 2055 West, next to Sephora.