This is the seventh article in a Vendor Profile Series intended to share the history and diversity of the Market through the stories of our vendors, as we celebrate our 25th Season. This article is written by journalist Barry Courter.
Shadow May learned growing up to meet things head on, to take what life throws at him and make the best with it. When the road splits or takes a turn, move forward and see where it takes you, or in other words lean into it.
It's that philosophy that led him to name his jerky business Turnroad.
“I never really got into coincidence,” he says. “I think coincidence is God's way of being anonymous in a way. I haven't really taken the easy road to get anywhere, to be honest with you. And all roads have led to here. Whether it be love, loss, divorce, addiction, second chances, redemption it's just as it should be.”
In the 2000s, the road brought Shadow to the Chattanooga Market from Knoxville where he lived and worked as a potter.
Some years later he got a job at the Volkswagen plant in Ooltewah and as a side hustle he started selling his homemade jerky to co-workers. He'd walk a mile each way to and from the gravel parking lot with a backpack full of individually bagged jerky and go home with a wad of cash - sometimes as much $500 - or, sometimes a handful of IOUs.
“I did my fair share of frontin' jerky till payday. When you gotta have jerky, ya gotta have it. I get it!!
“Literally, I was like a jerky pimp, a hustler, whatever you want to call it,” he says with a laugh.
“I've been making jerky for a long time,” he says.
Shadow describes his Hawaiian-born Filipino mother as a hippie (hence the name Shadow) and his father as a “carpenter-biker-criminal type” who raised Shadow and his brother Jesson in Alaska.
“My dad made me moose jerky my whole life. Black pepper actually to be specific. And, when I moved to the South - Knoxville was actually my first Southern city. I drove from Alaska, but once I got here, I learned to hunt deer. And so I had a lot of deer and I made deer jerky, which eventually led to bootlegging it at Volkswagen where I worked second-shift building cars.”
It was his wife, Erin, also co-founder and owner who convinced Shadow to quit Volkswagen after 2 1/2 years and to pursue this venture which is how the idea of TurnRoad was born.
“We actually were sitting at our picnic table daydreaming about the little blue building next to us and how that could and would soon become our first TurnRoad facility.”
They received the keys a short while later.
“We literally boot-strapped the whole first year on bedside prayers and a piggy bank budget. It's funny because there was a drawing with the words 'Start here' taped to the kitchen window that the previous owners had left behind. Honestly, Since that point on there have been a lot of turn-back moments of doubt and fear where Erin just dug deep with me and encouraged me to keep going. She saw something beautiful in this before I did.”
Today, Shadow and Erin have 10 employees and are moving the jerky operation from a 2,000-square-foot facility into a 4,000-square-foot building where he will make his award-winning jerky flavors. His BooYawn Brisket took home the gold at the 2024 International Jerky Awards.
Today, he offers 10 flavors including Garlic, Sweet Chili, Teriyaki, Habanero and House Blend varieties.
The couple works in cooperation with the Tennessee Youth employment program which works to help youth learn job skills.
“I needed a hand when I was young and we want to give those young individuals who are eager and need a step up a chance to progress and learn in a growing environment.
“The market provides a platform. What you put into it, is what you're going to get out of it.” — Shadow May
The Chattanooga Market is a big part of his business, but Turnroad jerky is available in retail outlets around the South and he sells at a wide variety of festivals in the area as well. He has 3 full-time staff, and around a half dozen part-time kitchen staff, as well as people in Nashville working the retail markets..
“Jerky sells anywhere except at vegan festivals,” he says with a laugh.
Shadow used his time at VW to experiment with different recipes and woods for smoking his jerky and says his co-workers were the best, and cheapest test kitchen he could find. While he was working at Volkswagen, Erin and I worked towards getting a license to produce jerky from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture.
“Once we got that, I gave my two-week notice,” he said. We worked under the TDA jurisdiction for about 1 1/2 years and then went through the grueling process of attaining our Coveted USDA License to manufacture Ready-to-Eat products like beef jerky and meat sticks on the highest level. We've been a USDA facility for almost 4 years now.
Shadow is continuing to look at ways to expand the business into other areas of handmade jerky including grass-fed beef and bison, lamb and pork.
“A lot of people don't know that you have to actually get another permit to do grass-fed beef, grass-fed bison, grass-fed anything. We do Wagyu. And this is all for farms that have come to us. So we are just essentially building their business because they don't have the facility one and they don't have the license because it's a grueling process and a lot of red tape to get.”
Being an artist early on helped Shadow learn to handle the business side of being an entrepreneur, but it was nothing on the scale of what he is doing now, he says.
“I wish I could tell you that, you know, all that experience and being an artist really helped, but I guess it is the next step. It was the next step for me.”
Shadow says the Chattanooga Market has provided him with a wonderful opportunity to grow his business and to develop his own skills.
“The market provides a platform. What you put into it, is what you're going to get out of it. So they are facilitating the best possible scenario for a company like me to be able to get out there and promote my product. And that's exactly what's happened.
“You know, they just do a great job of running and promoting and making the public very accessible to the vendor.”
