Fans of the HGTV hit “Home Town” have grown to love the show’s stars, Erin and Ben Napier, and their feel-good efforts to revitalize their small town of Laurel, Mississippi, one home renovation at a time. The show has become so popular that it has led to a few spinoffs, such as “Home Town Kick Start,” “Home Town Takeover,” and “Home Town: Ben’s Holiday Workshop,” which is about Christmas.
Fans of the shows know that the Napiers aren’t the only ones who fix up their homes. In fact, they often ask Erin’s best friend Mallorie Rasberry for help. Mallorie is a DIY enthusiast with a good eye for design and a knack for coming up with creative solutions to problems. Rasberry has become something of a secret weapon for the Napiers. For example, she once used her stenciling skills to help decorate a kitchen bar. All she needed was a piece of paper, a paintbrush, and a $10 can of paint to make a dramatic change on a tiny budget.
Fans of “Home Town” and its spinoffs have gotten to know this smart and creative wife and mother of two, but the average viewer wouldn’t know much more about her from watching the show. So, if you want to know everything you need to know about Mallorie Rasberry from “Home Town,” keep reading.
Table Of Content
- 1 She’s co-owner of an online retail outlet — and a financial services firm
- 2 Malorie Rasberry has taken a leading role in revitalizing Laurel
- 3 She’s a serious fan of antiques
- 4 Her design style combines functionality and comfort
- 5 The portraits in her home are of people she doesn’t know
- 6 Her century-old home has a working elevator
- 7 She went viral for cooking jambalaya on Home Town
- 8 She met her husband through best friend Erin Napier
- 9 She’s highly involved in her community
- 10 She refused a lucrative deal for foreign-made furniture to protect American workers
She’s co-owner of an online retail outlet — and a financial services firm
Mallorie Rasberry is a business owner, which some people who watch “Home Town” may not know. According to a profile in Closer Weekly, she is a co-owner of Laurel Mercantile, which has a storefront in downtown Laurel and also sells things online. Her husband, Jim Rasberry, and the “Home Town” stars Ben and Erin Napier, as well as Josh and Emily Nowell, are also co-owners of Laurel Mercantile. Rasberry told Gulf Coast Woman, “We’ve had an online store for a few years, so when Season One of HGTV’s “Home Town” was announced, we thought it was the perfect time to open the brick-and-mortar store right here in downtown Laurel.”
According to Mississippi Free Press, Laurel Mercantile grew out of Laurel Main Street, a local development group started by the Napiers, the Rasberrys, and others to get people to work together to improve the town’s downtown area.
Malorie Rasberry has taken a leading role in revitalizing Laurel
Rasberry told Lott Furniture, “Well, we have two businesses in the First National Bank Building.” Rasberry Producer Group is one of them, and she does a lot of different things for them. “I do things like pay our agents’ salaries, train them, and pay our bills,” she said. Rasberry Financial is also owned by her and her husband. “Jim takes care of the day-to-day things,” she said. “I usually take care of the books and things that happen behind the scenes.”
Malorie Rasberry has been a leader in reviving Laurel. The movie “Home Town” is about how Laurel, Mississippi, is being brought back to life, and Mallorie Rasberry has been in the lead since the beginning, around 2008. Rasberry told Gulf Coast Woman, “There was a core group of people who had invested in Laurel’s comeback. We were all buying old buildings and fixing them up while telling Laurel’s story to literally anyone who would listen.” “It’s a no-brainer for a successful businessperson who wants to move on to be a part of progress and change.”
Eventually, this group became known as Laurel Main Street, and Rasberry has been an active member of the board of directors since its beginnings in 2008 or so.
Rasberry told Lott Furniture, “I’m leaving as president of Laurel Main Street, but I stayed on the board as treasurer.” “I’ve taken a break from the committees, but I’m still involved.”
Rasberry, meanwhile, is still a busy person at the Laurel Welcome Center. In fact, she tries to spend some time every other day answering questions from visitors and representing her town in general. “So, I end up greeting a lot of people when they come to Laurel,” she said.
She’s a serious fan of antiques
Mallorie Rasberry is good friends with Erin Napier, and she also has the same taste in design and style as the “Home Town” star. A big reason for this is that they both love old things. “I’ve always loved antique shopping and collecting sentimental things,” she said in an interview for her Laurel Mercantile shop, in which she gave readers a tour of her Laurel home. She said that ginger jars are her favorite old things, and that she’s kind of obsessed with them. “So you’ll see those on the shelves, on the tables, and in the kitchen,” she said.
Rasberry isn’t a beginner when it comes to looking for antiques, whether it’s to decorate her own home, which is always changing, or to give to Erin Napier for a “Home Town” renovation. “I love to dig,” she told Laurel’s Lott Furniture Co. in an interview. “I love to find a deal more than anything else, whether it’s in a new store or an old one.”
Rasberry is also a firm believer in giving old things a new use. For example, the TV console in her home was used as a worktable by the previous owner of their home. Rasberry said, “We found it in his old watch repair shop where he used to work.” “In his shop, he had a drive-thru window where people could drop off watches for him to fix.
Her design style combines functionality and comfort
Mallorie Rasberry’s home’s interior design is simple, which shows in the renovations she does with Ben and Erin Napier on the show “Home Town.”
In an interview with Laurel Mercantile, Rasberry said, “My style is all about functionality and comfort.” This philosophy shows up most in the way she decorates the large porch of her Laurel home. She said, “I wanted the porch to be a casual, comfortable space that is also lively enough to host large groups.” “We have a big family and a large group of friends, and we love that our house has become a safe place to land and a hub for gatherings.”
Rasberry said that this focus on comfort not only reflects her ideas about how to decorate her home, but also the Southern-style hospitality she’s learned to love since moving to Laurel. “When people walk through our doors, I really want them to feel welcome and at ease,” she said. “That’s what home and hospitality mean to me. To feel better when you leave than when you arrived.”
Rasberry’s family, friends, and neighbors aren’t the only ones who get this kind of treatment. Visitors to Laurel who stay in the Laurel Cottages also get the same treatment.
The Downtown Laurel website said that Rasberry owns these cute Airbnb rentals and that she also decorated them.
The portraits in her home are of people she doesn’t know
Mallorie Rasberry’s home in Laurel, which she lives in with her husband Jim Rasberry and their two daughters, has a lot of old portraits on the walls. You could be forgiven for thinking that these portraits are of family, friends, or ancestors, but the truth is much more interesting. “Old oil portraits have always interested me, and when I find a good one, I buy it right away. I’m putting together a pretty good collection, “Rasberry said in an interview that was posted on the website for Laurel Mercantile.
Rasberry says that her husband might not like those old oil paintings as much as she does, but he still buys them for her. “Jim has taken it all in stride. God love him,” she added. “He doesn’t mind the weird things I do and goes with the flow.”
Rasberry has sweet memories of one portrait in particular, even though the person in the painting is someone she’s never met. She said that’s because the woman in the painting reminds Rasberry of her beloved grandmother. The blue-and-white plates on either side of the painting make a visual tableau that makes Rasberry think of her grandmother every time she looks at it.
Her century-old home has a working elevator
Mallorie Rasberry’s home in Laurel has a lot of strange and unusual things, like paintings of people she doesn’t know. The vintage elevator, which was put in by the home’s first owners, the Gilchrist family, and is still working today, is one of the most interesting parts. Rasberry told Laurel Mercantile that she made the elevator her own by painting it, putting down a rug, and adding a dog print that she found at a thrift store.
The so-called “bourbon room” is another unique room in the Rasberry house. It is where Jim keeps his impressive collection of whiskies, and it is also where the parents and their friends can hang out and be adults.
“This is our favorite place to hang out with people. There were many late nights…” Rasberry said this, and he also said that this is the room where the couple watches “CBS Sunday Morning” every week.
The couple probably watched a 2021 episode of “CBS Sunday Morning” in which their “Home Town” co-stars, Ben and Erin Napier, talked about the show’s popularity with HGTV viewers on the Rasberry home’s front porch.
Jim told Laurel Mercantile that it was amazing to see Erin and Ben talking to the interviewer, Martha Teichner. “I was just taking it all in, and I felt so proud because I know where Laurel has come from and how hard people have worked to get here.”
There’s no doubt that Mallorie Rasberry has had a big impact on “Home Town,” but there’s one moment in particular that shows how much of an impact she had on viewers. Closer pointed out that she did that in a Season 5 episode where she made jambalaya.
Reality Titbit said that fans of the show who watched the episode rushed to social media to ask for the recipe. Rasberry eventually put the recipe in the book “Family Recipes & Stories (Vol. 1)” by Laurel Mercantile.
Rasberry also had a secret to tell about her recipe for jambalaya, which was very popular. “But in reality, it’s not at all my recipe. It was my Aunt Betty’s, and I took it “she wrote for Laurel Mercantile’s blog. Rasberry says that her aunt, who had just died, taught her how to make the recipe when she was in college. “I miss her terribly, but I’m so glad I have my little Jambalaya Time Machine. Her legacy lives on in every pan we make,” she said.
She met her husband through her best friend Erin Napier, who plays Erin in “Home Town.” Erin is from Laurel, and she and her husband Ben moved back there after they graduated from college. Mallorie Rasberry told Gulf Coast Woman that she was born and raised in Tylertown, Mississippi. She moved to Laurel with her husband, Jim Rasberry, who was born and raised there.
Rasberry wouldn’t even be in Laurel if it weren’t for Napier, who was her roommate at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, when she was there. As it turned out, Napier’s senior art project was an exhibit about Laurel’s First National Bank Building. He made the visual ads and marketing materials for a new business that was opening in the building that would eventually house their joint venture, Laurel Mercantile. As luck would have it, that’s where she met Jim Rasberry, the cousin of her roommate. He had come to Oxford to see the exhibit.
She met her husband through best friend Erin Napier
Rasberry went crazy. Since the Napiers were so interested in bringing Laurel back to life, it was clear that Rasberry and her husband would also want to help. So, she said, “When I married Jim, became best friends with Erin and Ben, and moved to Laurel, I knew that the family and downtown Laurel came as a package.”
She’s highly involved in her community
As people who watch “Home Town” have learned, it’s not your typical HGTV home-improvement show. Even though Erin and Ben Napier’s personalities are a big draw, the show is really about their hometown of Laurel, Mississippi, which is also the name of the show. Mallorie Rasberry has been an active member of her community ever since she and her husband moved there. She uses her time, energy, and endless creativity to make her new home town a better place for everyone.
Rasberry’s involvement in her community not only helped the efforts to improve it, but it also gave her a new sense of purpose. Rasberry, who is a CPA, used to drive from her job in Hattiesberg, which is about 30 minutes outside of Laurel, to her job at Rasberry Producer Group. She said in a Raspberry Producer Group publication, “I didn’t really care until I started working here and joined the board for Laurel Main Street.”
Rasberry helped the town get back on its feet for many years and learned a few things along the way. In 2019, she shared what she had learned at an event called Downtown Comeback. UCANews.live at the University of Central Arkansas said that Rasberry and her husband Jim were among the speakers at the event, which was held at the university’s McCastlain Hall. They talked about how other people can revive their own towns by doing what they did in Laurel.
She refused a lucrative deal for foreign-made furniture to protect American workers
After “Home Town” became a hit, HGTV’s success started to spread to Laurel. This was especially true of Laurel Mercantile Co., which was owned by Ben and Erin Napier, Josh and Emily Nowell, and Jim and Mallorie Rasberry, all of whom lived in Laurel. In fact, a Chinese company that makes furniture offered Laurel Mercantile a deal not long after the first episode of the show. Mallorie told American Manufacturing, “They asked us to do a licensing deal, and the money was more than any of us could have imagined. But we didn’t want to sell out, so we put our money where our mouths were and said, ‘No.'”
Ben Napier instead contacted the American furniture company Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co., which had turned down the chance to move its factory from Galax, Virginia, to China.
Rasberry thought that a partnership between the two companies would be good for both Laurel and Galax.
Rasberry said, “When we saw the town of Galax and the 600 people they employed, it really hit us that this is so much bigger than us.”
“Their grandparents used to work here. This is how they make a living… If we’re serious about bringing life back to small towns in America, we need to support American jobs and manufacturers that help those towns.”
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