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By Carey Reeder | Managing Editor

“We got this.”

That has grown to be the rally cry for four business partners in Verbena who now have two completely separate ventures on their plate after a recent rebrand. The Over Yonder at De Vena Plaza was created in May by Anna Lambert and her husband Jordan Lambert, as well as Heather McCay and her fiancé Bo Granthum, who purchased the building at the corner of Highway 31 and County Road 59 in Verbena.

The goal was to bring back life to the Verbena community with an eat and shop location right in the heart of town. Anna Lambert and McCary established the Holy Spotted Cow Boutique after the two started the business out of the back of their SUVs.

“Next thing I know, (Heather) was coming up with vendor spots, and we started doing them all in Wetumpka, Prattville and all over Chilton County,” Anna Lambert said.

The 2023 Peach Jam Jubilee was the first vendor event the boutique attended, and they did very well. The boutique started by selling just Myra handbags, but its inventory grew quickly to include cups, clothing and other accessories as the business partners chose things to include that they wanted to own themselves. They grew into a trailer, then a bus and eventually outgrew the bus.

“We had to do something because it would take an hour and a half to set up and an hour and a half to break down,” McCary said.

As more customers asked about their storefront, Jordan Lambert and Granthum offered their recommendations while helping Anna Lambert and McCary setup and teardown at each event, the time came for the business to expand even further. The four established the boutique in their hometown where they have children that attend Verbena High School.

“It was a true team effort by all of us,” Lambert said.

The restaurant that was a part of the building was preserved by the group, and they chose to rent the space out. Zee’s Over Yonder was the first restaurant to come into the space that served street soul food, and it was a much-needed addition to a community that has had limited food options for a number of years. The restaurant gives people working in the Verbena area a place to have lunch without driving 15 minutes away on their 30-minute or hour breaks midday.

Unfortunately, the restaurant was short-lived, and it was gone in just over a month, leaving those Verbena residents who got accustomed to having a local eatery so close by without one again.

“We were like ‘We are just going to open this up ourselves,’” Anna Lambert said. “It was more Bo’s idea to open it, and all of us were like ‘There is no way we can do all of this.’”

The first step to any new business is a name, and the group decided to incorporate the two couple’s names. The first part of Granthum and the last part of Lambert was used to create Grant-bert Restaurant. The menu was revamped as well, and it includes appetizer and main course options such as fried pickles, chicken fingers, grilled cheese, fries and cheese sticks. Grant-Bert is also connecting with VHS athletics with a Verbena Specials menu that includes the Devil Dog, the Touchdown Cheeseburger, the VHS Pizza and the Coaches Hot Hamburger.

The restaurant received a large contingent of its customers requesting brunch-like food on the menu, and Grant-bert put that stuff on the menu like French toast, the brunch burger that has egg on it and a club sandwich.

“We did not want to let the Verbena community down, and they got used to having a restaurant there for over a month and they were enjoying it too much,” Anna Lambert said. “We heard a lot of stories, more history about Verbena and how the residents did not want it to go away. There was just no way we could let Verbena down, so we just came up with an idea.”

The group has based the restaurant more around the history of Verbena and have artifacts and images on the walls that focus on the town of Verbena and the history of the area. The sports teams at VHS are well represented in the restaurant as well both on the walls and on the menu. With the help of friends, family and the community, Grant-bert Restaurant was officially opened on Sept. 4. The entire restaurant rebrand was put together in a week’s time, and the food permit was the last step for the business partners. With the boutique right next door, residents have described them as the Verbena Cracker Barrel with eating and shopping all together in one spot.

The 11 a.m.-8 p.m. hours on Monday-Saturday are still being kept for both the boutique and restaurant. However, they are extending their hours to 10 p.m. on Friday nights in the fall when the VHS football team is playing at home. They are also adding hours to Sunday and will be open 11 a.m.-2 p.m. to capitalize on some of the church traffic in Verbena following the services.

“If it was not for the help from our community and friends, and a lot of people coming up to us saying ‘We could do it’ and giving us high hopes of succeeding, I do not see us doing what we are doing now,” Anna Lambert said. “We give a lot of props to our community, friends and family for pitching in, helping and telling us ‘We got this.’”

The group is hopeful to bring back public events in the town with their addition of the Over Yonder at De Vena Plaza, such as Trade Days where a portion of County Road 59 was blocked off from the railroad tracks to Verbena United Methodist Church and people set up tables to sell and trade goods. The town has not held the event for over 12 years.

“Verbena used to be a very happening town,” McCary said. “We want to start that back and actually get the heart of Verbena back, and that is our goal.”