HUNTSVILLE, Ala (WHNT) — If you head into Huntsville Nutrition off of Governors Drive, you can find a variety of loaded teas, coffees, healthy shakes, and more.
But behind the bar, you can find a working student who’s turned her dreams into reality.
“I didn’t want limits over my head, so I knew if I opened my own that I would create the limits…like if I want a raise, I go get that raise … if I want more, I go get more,” she said.
21-year-old Dezarae Pate is Huntsville Nutrition’s owner and operator.
“It was a lot saving up, but I did start saving up maybe a year before I thought I wanted to do something like this, and I started buying the small things along the way,” she said. “Then, when it came time to renting, that’s when I knew I was going to have to work a lot to make it happen.”
Pate said she’s getting her business degree at Calhoun, and she’s spent the last four years serving tables, hoping to one day open up a business of her own.
“I was there like as many shifts as I could just to pay for the work to get done, and then I was still in school, so I did school online so that I was able to work more because I knew what I needed to get it open,” she said.
With the help of her family and friends, she said they spent the last few months turning an old gym into the store space.
“We signed the lease in September, and then a lot of work had to be done to the building,” she said. “It was pretty rundown, but now we got it all fixed up, and the journey was pretty rough, but I feel like I needed the journey to be the person I needed to be to open.”
While this young entrepreneur’s dreams are endless, she said right now, her main focus is growing relationships with the community.
“I would say the dream is just to connect with as many people in the Huntsville community that I can and, you know, gain friendships and relationships with those people,” she said.
If you want to stop in and see Dezerae, Huntsville Nutrition is located at 3300 Governors Drive SW, Unit C.
On Mondays, the shop offers special discounts all day long on mega Teas, and Tuesdays are two-stamp Tuesday on loyalty cards. They also do deliveries.
To reach out to the shop, you can call (256) 801-5986.
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