Grow Chico soars on wings and a prayer | It’s Your Business
The journey from sprint car driver to founding a family business, Grow Chico, that specializes in organic heirloom vegetable plants, microgreens and quail eggs took some unusual turns for Chico’s Johnny Gray.Gray, who started racing outlaw cars when he was 11 years old and then sprint cars in 2000, retired from racing in 2010 to go to work for his father, John Gray Jr., in the family business, Jessee Heating and Air Conditioning. After his father passed away in 2017 and extended family took over the business, Gray, a life-long hunter and fisher, moved on to work for Wilderness Unlimited, a private fishing, hunting and camping club.Things rolled along for Gray until 2020 when he broke his left ankle and leg. Following surgery for those breaks, Gray was in a walking cast for 12 weeks. A week after the cast came off, the left ankle broke again, and another surgery and casting followed. After the second cast was removed, Gray’s left leg broke again, and there was another surgery and casting. During this time Gray was “basically immobile” and, unbeknownst to him, became diabetic.Among Grow Chico’s products available at local grocery stores are the microgreens, left, and quail eggs, far right. The naturally fermented salsa and five hot sauces, center, are value-added products the company plans to bring to market by the end of 2025. All are seen here at the company’s headquarters on Nov. 20, 2024 in Chico, California. (Kyra Gottesman/Mercury-Register)“I kept getting weaker and weaker,” recalled Gray. “I was crawling around the house. I’d always been a healthy eater, but I wasn’t able to cook and was eating Door Dash-type food. My diet became horrible.”On Halloween 2022, Gray’s mom found him unresponsive in his home, and he was rushed to the hospital in “full liver failure.” His diabetes was diagnosed, and he was placed in an induced coma for three weeks before being released to go home. Less than a week later, his blood sugar soared, and he was back in the hospital. After a short stay, Gray was sent home with the recommendation he receive hospice care. He was 41 years old.“It was an intense time in my life,” Gray said. “I decided I didn’t want to die and I needed to figure something out so, I dove into nutrition.”His plunge into nutrition led him to start intermittent fasting and eating only organic and grass-feed beef and organic and naturally fermented foods, which are naturally high in probiotics that enrich the gut’s microbiota, crucial for a healthy microbial balance and immunity, said Gray.It wasn’t long after changing his diet that Gray began feeling better, getting stronger and was able to stop using insulin to manage his diabetes.“I learned a lot and it saved my life,” said Gray. “That’s when I decided to make a business that I could do with my kids and share my knowledge, experience and what I was eating with others. That’s when I started Grow Chico.”Room for growthGray set up three 25-foot green houses in the back yard of his Chico home and transformed his garage into a grow room for microgreens and heirloom vegetable plants. He also built an aviary for a small flock of coturnix quail, and began marketing their eggs along with his other products.“Quail eggs are delicious,” said Gray. “They are higher in riboflavin, iron, vitamins D6 and B than chicken eggs. They are so much more flavorful than chicken eggs.”Raising the birds took Gray back to his childhood when he kept turkeys, parakeet, doves and quail as a hobby. His family also had potbelly pigs, and Gray had a pet iguana and boa constrictor.These curious coturnix quail peek out of the aviary where they are kept with the rest of Grow Chico’s egg-producing flock on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024 in Chico, California. (Johnny Gray/Contributed)“When I was 16, I hatched 1,257 Bob White quail in an incubator in my bedroom closet,” said Gray. “It wasn’t until they started hatching that my parents knew they were there. It came as surprise, but at that point, they were used to me and my circus animals. They were used to me chasing the escaped pot belly pigs through the neighborhood and the iguana and snake getting loose and getting up into the Christmas tree.”With his sons — Gage Gray and Beau Gray, now 17 and 14, respectively — at his side, Gray grew the new business supplying heirloom vegetable plant starts to Northern Star Mills, Wilbur’s Feed and Seed, and Greenfire hydroponics.Grow Chico quail eggs and microgreens are sold at New Earth Market, S& S Produces, Chico Natural Foods and My Orient Market. Several restaurants — including Raw Bar Chico, Cheers Chico and Tom Tom’s Island Style food truck– also purchase Grow Chico microgreens and quail eggs.“Gage is my right-hand man in the business,” said Gray. “And, Beau is my guy for everything computer- and technology-related. It’s great to see my sons have the same passion for this stuff as I do.”All in the familyWhile Gage enjoys growing the microgreens and vegetables, it’s raising the quail that is his favorite part of the business.“I grew up with birds — ducks, chicken, pheasants and turkeys,” said Gage. “I like working with the quail. They are a lot of fun.”As he’s been working to establish and increase Grow Chico’s quail egg, microgreens and vegetable plant business, Gray has also been developing a line of small-batch, value-added naturally fermented products including salsa and hot sauces. These he prepares using some of the 25 different heirloom peppers he grows as well as his own organic vegetables or those from local farmers or S&S Produce.Because the salsa is naturally fermented it has a unique and pleasant tangy flavor layered over the heat of the peppers and natural sweetness of the tomatoes.To date, Gray has developed four richly flavorful hot sauces including Puma Pepper, Lemon Drop, Sweet Heat, Smoked Chili Verde and a brand new variety he calls the “kitchen sink,” because it’s made with all the peppers leftover from making the other varieties.Currently the salsa and hot sauces are only available to family and friends, as Gray is “battling” his way through the process of obtaining the state and county licensing necessary to sell them.“My goal is to have the licenses by the end of 2025 so I can put them on the market,” said Gray. “In the meantime, I share them with people I know to get feedback which will help me continue to develop and improve the hot sauces and salsa.”For more information on Grow Chico, visit the company’s Facebook page.Reach Kyra Gottesman at [email protected]
