Get Ready for The Golden Beet

Cold Creek Farm’s offshoot eatery-slash-market opens in June

By Geri Dietze | June 13, 2026

If you know Benzonia’s Cold Creek Farm, its organic produce, and its line of hot sauces (more on those below), you’ll be pleased to find that the new storefront, The Golden Beet, will open soon in Frankfort with an impressive and expanded product line, fresh vegetarian take-out, and a collection of vinyl for groovin’ during business hours.

The Beat of the Beet

The new digs replace the little red store at 529 Main St. and will be bigger and brighter, with vibrant colors, live-edge wood counters, and a lighted, glass brick focal wall. An open commercial kitchen will do active service in small-batch production, keeping everything fresh, anticipating customer preferences, and experimenting with new favors.

“[This will] be a fun, family-friendly, year-round space for locals and tourists to stop in and grab a snack, a meal, or a kombucha,” explains co-owner Julie Cramer.

Cramer developed an affinity for golden beets because of their mild flavor and versatility. She uses them on top of salads, in baked goods and dips, pickled, in slaw—the list goes on. She adds, “The Golden Beet is also…a nod to our love of music and listening to a ‘Golden BEAT,’ and a golden beet sliced in half kind of looks like a vinyl record.” (It sorta does.)

With plans to open at the end of June, The Golden Beet’s offerings will include a rotation of green salads with fruit or vegetables and fresh dressings, plus grain bowls, seasonal soups, sandwiches, wraps, baked goods, and kombucha on tap.

In keeping with the music theme, Saturday Jazz Vinyl Brunch lets you listen to curated jazz while choosing from breakfast wraps, breakfast salads, baked goods, yogurt cups, quiche, and fresh brewed coffee from Manistee’s Five Five Coffee.

And, we love these fresh juices in the cooler: Green Juice (kale, celery, cucumber, parsley, apple, pear), and the Golden Beet Juice (golden beet, carrot, apple, ginger, lemon juice).

But wait, there’s more! Don’t skip the India-inspired Ayurvedic beverage mixes, which include the famous anti-inflammatory Golden Milk with turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, and black pepper. There’s also a selection of teas to peruse, like Hojicha & Maple roasted macha.

Patrons will also find Cold Creek's hot sauces (more on that below), Tropic Like It’s Hot Mustard, Asian Style Hot BBQ Sauce, and Steak Sauce. Look for 20 varieties of spice blends, including the popular Superspice, healthy Ramen Blend, Taco, and Betsie Bay (for seafood and veggies), plus blends for beef and chicken.

A Business Plan

So how did all of this—a restaurant, hot sauce, and farming—come together?

As it turns out, one scientist and one organic farmer make a pretty good team. Julie Cramer met Chad Van Tol of Cold Creek Farm when she was managing the Grow Benzie Farmer’s Market and Chad was a vendor selling his produce and a small array of products.

“We realized that…expand[ing] [Chad’s product line would] be beneficial for both of us [and] our different skillsets…” Cramer explains.

Cramer’s degrees in environmental engineering and soil chemistry, with deep professional experience in laboratories and in environmental consulting, helped her to obtain certifications and licensing. Van Tol has a business degree, professional managerial experience, organic farm experience garnered at Trillium Haven in Grand Rapids, and certification in permaculture.

Their working philosophy relies on ancient Indian Ayurveda, the holistic healing system focused on good habits, nutrition, and natural therapies to prevent illness and promote wellness.

This fits with something Cramer picked up on a trip to Okinawa: “The phrase ‘Nuchi Gusui’ means that food and daily rituals nourish the body, mind, and spirit, promoting health, happiness, and longevity.”

Down on the Farm

“[We] talk about producing food ‘from the ground up,’” Cramer says. meaning that the produce grows in healthy soil and water thanks to Cold Creek Farm’s use of permaculture, an amazing method using natural processes and systems.

For example, the soil is strengthened using natural composted additions, or amendments, to support healthy root growth. (No chemical fertilizer.) Crops are planted together to optimize nutrients—like planting beans near squash to optimize nitrogen—and growing multiple plants in multiple areas to always ensure areas of healthy harvest.

Other techniques include growing in zones to minimize loss, with sprouts close to home and an orchard on the perimeter; using raised beds to minimize water use and weed control; plus composting, and solarizing (covering an area) to control weeds. Farm animals (pets, really) are used for pest control: six chickens and six ducks, including Chuck the Duck, eat their weight in grasshoppers while also supplying eggs. Wilbur the potbellied pig and best bud George, the stray cat who stayed, provide back-up.

In winter, seeds get off to a good start in the propagation room where they grow in perfect light, heat, and humidity. The farm offers multiple varieties of kale, Swiss chard, tomatoes, sweet peppers, herbs, and edible flowers, plus scallions, shallot, and eggplant. Others get their start right in the ground, as soon as the frost is gone, including root vegetables, sweet peas, cucumbers, squash, and melons. Berries, herbs, lavender, and the apple orchard make up the perennials.

The farm is off to the races for the summer, and The Golden Beet won’t be far behind!

All About the Heat

Let’s not forget about Cold Creek’s showstopper: hot sauce.

Cold Creek produces 18 different varieties of hot sauce. The most popular are the Sleeping Bear Sriracha, mild with red serrano pepper; the Groovy Green, mild and tangy with green serrano pepper, lime juice, garlic and fresh cilantro; and the Elberta Beach Peach, medium with peach, habanero pepper, and lemon juice.

A few other favorites include the Hellraiser, medium taco sauce with tomato, habanero, lime juice, and coriander; the Burning Embers, a medium blend with habanero peppers; and the Deathstalker, superhot with Carolina Reaper pepper. (You’ve been warned!)

Cold Creek Farm mainly uses Fresno, serrano, habanero, ghost, and Carolina Reaper, chosen because the heat comes “from behind”—taste the sauce first, and the heat comes after—making them ideal for hot sauces. (Conversely, peppers like cayenne and Scorpion have heat “up front” thereby losing the flavor of the sauce.)

“We experiment every year…choosing varieties that may work well for our hot sauces and also grow well in this climate,” says Van Tol. He explains that peppers have a specific shape, color, and “thickness” to their wall, but that it is easy to “get lost” in the variety, and so they look to “favorite growers for indications of heat,” as measured in Scoville Heat Units, for “preferred growing conditions, and flavor.”

Sauces are “part science and part experiment,” Van Tol notes, and while they must keep to a general formula for licensing purposes, beyond that, “the sky’s the limit.”

One favorite of his is the Orange Screamsicle with orange juice, orange zest, and vanilla bean. Another is Korean Style, “where we…hit the Asian flavor notes of spicy serrano pepper, sweet pears, bitter sesame oil, salty pink Himalayan Sea salt, and sour vinegar [and] lime juice to create a beautifully balanced hot sauce.”

The Michigan Heatseeker is a new strain of pepper cultivated at Cold Creek Farm exclusively, “with help from the bees,” as part of their proprietary “Seed to Sauce” program. It’s a cross between Thai and Hungarian peppers “with low heat…but huge flavor.” The sauce is complemented by lime juice and garlic, and goes on everything.

Find The Golden Beet at 1048 Main St., Frankfort, behind Family Fare, in front of the food trucks. Learn more about Cold Creek Farm at ccfbenzonia.com.