LR's The Root Cafe wins TV competition, $25,000

The Root owners Jack and Corri Sundell are interviewed for "Growing America: A Journey to Success" in the Little Rock restaurant after learning they had won $25,000.
The Root owners Jack and Corri Sundell are interviewed for "Growing America: A Journey to Success" in the Little Rock restaurant after learning they had won $25,000.

Little Rock's The Root Cafe has $25,000 to put toward expanding its size and hours after winning a vote that capped its appearance on a cable television show.

The locally sourced restaurant in the city's South Main district was one of three small businesses across the country featured in Growing America: A Journey to Success, a documentary series that aired over several weeks on HLN.

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In the show, hosted by Ty Pennington of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition fame, teams of MBA students worked with each of the three businesses, examining their approaches and making suggestions about potential improvements.

Then viewers voted online for the most inspirational of the three: a Detroit barbershop, a Denver-based disaster-relief nonprofit group or the farm-to-table-oriented Little Rock restaurant. In the finale, which aired Sunday night, Pennington traveled to Arkansas to surprise owners Jack and Corri Sundell with the news they had received the most votes.

The show's producers had said they needed to shoot additional footage for an episode, not revealing until they arrived the real reason they were returning.

"My jaw dropped," Jack Sundell said Monday of the win, which was actually filmed Dec. 9. "Corri and I were both totally surprised and speechless and exhilarated. It's really exciting. And it's really humbling to have the people watching the show vote for us and give us that vote of confidence in what we're doing."

The Sundells ended up on the show by a "total coincidence," Jack Sundell said, after a man who booked them for a presentation at Governor's School in Conway last year recommended them for the MBAs Across America program. It later turned out the TV show was highlighting the effort — for an "uplifting" show, not negative, reality-TV fare, producers assured — by following three teams of students. A group from Stanford worked with The Root for five days.

"For a business our size, the show was great, and obviously winning the voting was an incredible benefit," Jack Sundell said. "But just the business advice the students gave us was really important, too."

Among the tips offered were recommendations on how to revamp The Root's online and social media presence and some ways to improve its system for ordering food from area farmers.

The win came with the "most inspirational" title as well as the $25,000 prize, which the Sundells plan to use to do preliminary work toward an addition to The Root's location at 1500 S. Main St. and expansion of its hours. The restaurant currently doesn't open for dinner but will work toward serving it three nights a week.

There's no set timetable for when the changes will occur, but Jack Sundell said it could conceivably be as early as next summer.

He said patrons have been talking about the TV appearance, both customers who were regulars before it aired and some who stopped by after seeing it.

"You know it's a rare win-win situation," he said of the experience. "It was a great thing for The Root, it was great for the MBAs because they had a really amazing experience. They were a great benefit to all the businesses they visited, but they told us it was also a learning experience for them to go to all these business and see how they operate."

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arshia khan

Jack and Corri Sundell are the masterminds behind the cafe opening on South Main Street in Little Rock.

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