Today we’d like to introduce you to Vincent Buttrick.
Hi Vincent, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My story begins in a rural suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. As a child, my parents dragged me out to help in the garden. Despite all the nagging about having to pull weeds, those summers were defined by an endless bounty of sweet corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, and zucchini. I distinctly remember the smell of my mom’s freshly baked zucchini bread, and even then, I could taste the night-and-day difference between backyard-grown produce and the flavorless items from the grocery store!
The real turning point, though, came after college when I moved to South Carolina. My parents gifted me a simple herb seed starter kit and one of those infamous As Seen on TV “Topsy Turvy” upside-down tomato planters.
I failed miserably.
But instead of giving up, that failure ignited a massive curiosity. I wanted to understand why the plants failed. I went to the local library and walked out with dozens of books at a time, taking a deep dive into the science and chemistry of growing. I obsessed over soil pH, water retention, temperature mapping, and seed saving techniques. My parents even mailed me their own collection of 1980s gardening books to fuel the fire!
Building an Urban Oasis in Columbia:
When I bought my first home in Columbia in 2018, the very first project was transforming the yard. I spent countless hours tracking sun patterns, removing trees to maximize sunlight, and collecting microclimate data on our local Zone 8 frost dates using the Farmers Almanac.
Before long, my garden was overflowing just like my parents’ garden used to. To handle the surplus, I dove into canning, fermenting, and dehydrating my own pepper spice blends and jams. Soon, my obsession shifted from buying big-box store plants to starting hundreds of rare, unique seed varieties myself.
I quickly ran out of space so I started selling my extra plants on Facebook Marketplace and local plant trading groups, but then, the notorious year of 2020 arrived.
When the first wave of the pandemic shut down local nurseries, I was sitting on hundreds of healthy plants. I started offering contactless plant deliveries to those who still needed and wanted to grow their own food while stuck at home. The response was overwhelming. It was in those crazy weeks that I realized this wasn’t just a hobby anymore—there was a thriving community hungry for what I was growing. I realized that other local growers and backyard gardeners in our community were searching for the exact same things: high-quality, organic seeds and healthy, robust live plants acclimated to our climate.
In 2020, we officially filed for a LLC and that’s how Soda City Greens was born—a name proudly honoring our Columbia roots! We wanted to bridge the gap between heirloom quality and local accessibility. Today, we’re incredibly proud to supply growers with everything from everyday garden staples to some of the wildest, rarest pepper varieties on the planet. It’s been an amazing ride turning a personal hobby into a business that helps our community cultivate their own thriving green spaces.
Where We Are Today:
Over the last few years, we have scaled our half-acre property into a thriving, highly productive urban oasis that provides fruits, vegetables, plants, and seeds year-round. Along the way, we’ve hit some milestones we are incredibly proud of:
Local Recognition:
We won a local award for Best Container Garden.
Community Partners:
We partner with fantastic Columbia businesses, supplying fresh produce to local jam companies, ice cream shops, and restaurants.
National Spotlights:
Our unique and rare peppers were recently featured on an episode of celebrity Chef Nick DiGiovanni’s YouTube channel (the world’s largest food channel with over 43 million followers!), and we’ve been highlighted on popular cooking blogs like Grill Seeker.
While we’ve outgrown the early days of personal plant deliveries, we’ve made our products more accessible than ever. Today, we ship our live plants, seed packs, spice blends, and fresh produce nationwide through our website. And for our local crowd, you can find us on Saturdays at the historic Soda City Market, ranked as one of the best farmer’s markets in the country, right in the heart of the city where our story first began.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has definitely not been a smooth, weed-free road! Starting a business is always a challenge, but launching in the middle of a global pandemic added a whole new layer of complexity.
In 2020, we had to navigate a landscape of supply chain disruptions and sudden closures. Yet, that initial obstacle actually became our biggest opportunity. When local nurseries shut down, people still wanted—and needed—to grow their own food. Step one was simply figuring out how to safely get plants into the hands of anxious backyard growers.
Beyond the unique challenges of COVID-19, the sheer logistics of building a business from the ground up presented a steep learning curve:
In the beginning, I was building Soda City Greens while working a demanding, full-time job. I was constantly spreading myself thin—spending long days at work, only to come home and spend half the night packaging seeds, harvesting plants, filling orders, and responding to a non-stop influx of customer emails and social media messages.
Battling the South Carolina heat is another beast. Growing plants in Columbia (with a city motto of “Famously Hot”)is a sport of its own. It took a lot of trial, error, and meticulous monitoring to master the art of cultivating delicate, rare varieties in the intense, humid South Carolina heat.
It’s also one thing to hand a healthy plant to someone at a farmers market; it is another thing entirely to package a delicate living organism so it can survive a multi-day journey across the country in a dark box. We had to experiment extensively with wrapping, securing, and moisture control techniques before we perfected a shipping method that guaranteed plants arrived on our customers’ doorsteps looking as fresh as they did in our garden.
We have absolutely found our rhythm and balance today, but we’re still subject to the seasons. The spring rush—when gardeners across the country are eager to get their hands in the dirt—is still an incredibly intense, fast-paced time of year for us. But looking back at where we started, every single one of those struggles taught us how to build a stronger, more resilient business.
We’ve been impressed with Soda City Greens, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Our motto and logo now stands as “Rooted in the Carolinas: Bringing The Heat & The Harvest”
Based in the heart of Columbia, Soda City Greens is more than just a seed shop—we’re a celebration of South Carolina’s soil. As a certified SC Grown urban farm and organic producer, we specialize in bringing the farm to your front door. We consider ourselves South Carolina’s home for heat with over 200 unique pepper varieties ranging from Carolina Sweet to Legendary Heat! Whether you’re looking for vibrant plants, seasonal microgreens, fresh figs, spices or exploring our massive collection of peppers, we provide the highest quality seeds and live plants for every grower.
We like to say “Shop local, grow organic, and taste the Soda City difference!”
Our proudest moment is our feature in the national spotlight- Our unique and rare peppers were recently featured on an episode of celebrity Chef Nick DiGiovanni’s YouTube channel (the world’s largest food channel with over 43 million followers!)
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
Over the next 5 to 10 years, I see the home gardening industry shifting from a beloved leisure hobby into a critical household economy strategy. We are already beginning to see this transition, and several major trends are driving it forward:
With inflation, rising food costs, and supply chain vulnerabilities, people are looking at their grocery bills and realizing that growing even a fraction of their own produce is a smart financial move. A single heirloom tomato plant or a handful of pepper seeds can yield an abundance of fresh food for a fraction of store-bought prices.
It feels like every other week the news is littered with reports of bacterial outbreaks, agricultural contamination, and massive recalls on grocery store produce—especially leafy greens and fresh vegetables. People are tired of worrying about where their food came from and how it was handled. There is an immense, unmatched peace of mind that comes from walking out to your own backyard, clipping some organic produce, and knowing exactly what went into growing it.
It’s important for every past, present, and future grower to know that you don’t need a massive multi-acre farm to grow high-quality food! Over the next decade, I think we will see a dramatic rise in urban agriculture, vertical gardening, and ‘edible landscaping’—where homeowners swap out purely decorative shrubs for fruit-bearing bushes, herbs, and vibrant pepper plants. Because of these shifts, I expect the number of committed home gardeners to increase dramatically, particularly among younger generations who value sustainability and transparency. At Soda City Greens, we’ve built our business to support this exact movement. We aren’t just selling seeds and plants; we are giving people the tools, the resilient organic genetics, and the scientific know-how to take control of their own food supply.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sodacitygreens.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sodacitygreens/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sodacitygreens/
