JODY CUTLER sat amid a jumble of boxes, tables and chairs while workers peppered her with questions and vendors asked directions. It was 11 days before the opening of Great Sage, a vegetarian restaurant in Clarksville.
"I liken it to doing a production," said the former drama instructor. "You spend your whole rehearsal period thinking, `This is never going to happen.' And you work around the clock and it comes out, and it's marvelous."
Together with business partners Jeff Kaufman and his wife, Holly Kaufman, Cutler and a newly hired staff opened Great Sage on June 22.
The restaurant is the third collaborative business endeavor for Cutler, 36, and Jeff Kaufman, 35. The first was Roots Market, which opened in 2000; the second was Nest, a gift shop that opened in 2003. All three businesses are in Clarksville Square.
Jeff Kaufman, a Clarksville resident, became a vegetarian 14 years ago after writing a paper on factory farming for an ethics class at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. For Kaufman, the major issue in his decision to become a vegetarian was not about killing animals.
"To me, that's the most minor issue," he said. "The major issue is the amount of suffering these animals go through ... the years of suffering in cramped quarters [where] a lot of them can't move, foods they are fed and the amount of hormones and antibiotics they are pumped up with. When I finished that paper, there was no turning back."
Before graduating, Kaufman cycled across the United States, on the way meeting people involved in natural healing. He gained experience in the natural foods industry while working at Living Foods, an independent natural foods market in Berkeley, Calif.
Cutler grew up in New York City where her father, Artie Cutler, owned and operated 21 restaurants. She graduated from the University of Rochester with a degree in music and for six years, taught theater and vocal music at the Barrie School in Silver Spring.
Cutler met Kaufman in 1996 at My Organic Market (MOM) in Rockville, where both had jobs.
At MOM, Cutler and Kaufman noticed customers from the Columbia area who brought coolers to fill with organic food. They suspected that Howard County was underserved in the natural foods market, and research proved them right. Sales at Roots Market have grown more than 20 percent each year since opening.
But Cutler says Roots had one drawback.
