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...But his passion for farming and the outdoors pulled him away from the restaurant scene

With Jeremy’s culinary success came sleepless nights, long commutes, and time away from his wife, Alison. “Eventually, I despised cooking,” Storey says. “It took over my life.”

So he eyed Charleston, a fresh-aired place to which he and Alison agreed to someday escape. When the couple’s first son, Wyatt, turned one in 2014, they left bustling Chicago for a quiet John’s Island farm. Storey convinced Johnny Rolfe, his coworker at Alinea, to come too, and they hatched a plan to raise free-range chickens and sell the eggs and meat.

Storey Farms started with just 500 chickens

Today, the farm hosts around 3,000 happy birds, raised on a diet of alfalfa and regular exercise.

“Charleston, it turned out, is one of the best cities for local farmers,” Storey says. He went door-to-door to restaurants, successfully selling eggs and meat. Storey’s culinary cred proved helpful: “I knew what chefs wanted,” he notes. The farm’s top-tier clients now include FIG, High Cotton, McCrady’s, Macintosh, Husk, and Poogan’s Porch. And diners eat a lot of eggs: Poogan’s Porch alone orders around 200 dozen a week.

Happy chickens taste better

Storey Farms also sells at farmers markets on John’s Island and Folly Beach, as well as at The Daily and Meathouse Butcher Shop. Customers sometimes ask why free-range chicken products are different than commercial varieties. “If a chicken has a good life, it shows in the quality of the product,” Storey says. “A happy chicken just tastes better.”