People

Mandi Horn was selling produce from her 270-acre organic farm, but had a sense that her buyers weren’t using the bounty to its fullest. Then a Bedford building – partly constructed in the 1770s – went up for sale. “I had this vision of it being a restaurant,” says Mandi. “And I said, ‘Somebody ought to do that.’”

Progress

With help from the St. Francis University Small Business Development Center, Mandi made a plan. Then she inquired with a bank. “After I found all the benefits of The Progress Fund, it totally outweighed it,” she says. The Progress Fund loaned $320,000 so Mandi could buy and improve the building, purchase equipment and train a dozen employees.

Impact

Many restaurants don’t have the flexibility to put seasonal vegetables on the menu. At Horn O Plenty, the menu is a chalkboard on which you may find organic grass-fed beef burgers with fresh beet ketchup, wood-fired pizza topped with local yogurt and arugula pesto, or trout that was swimming that morning and smoked over apple wood in the afternoon. When a farmer drove up with too much kohlrabi, “That night we had kohlrabi on the menu,” says Mandi. “People don’t realize how delicious it can be.”

This project was financed in part using Pennsylvania Small Business Credit Initiative (PSBCI) funds from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Community and Economic Development.

The Progress Fund is an equal opportunity provider and employer.