DOWN ON THE FARM: A FORMER OFFICE DEPOT CEO FINDS PURPOSE IN A LOCALLY GROWN FAMILY BUSINESS IN ALAMANCE COUNTY.

• Author: Tosczak, Mark
• Position: NC TREND: Food & drink

In early October, a Willie Nelson look-alike with a graying ZZ Top beard stepped into Reverence Farms Cafe to ask about ordering a pasture-raised, organic turkey for Thanksgiving. Bruce Nelson--also gray-haired, but without the long hair or beard--took his order.

Taking turkey orders is just one thing 72-year-old Nelson might do on any given day at the 2-year-old restaurant. He might also mediate disputes between the restaurant's night shift and morning crew, make sure there are enough dishwashers and waitstaff scheduled for a busy evening, or jump in to help serve customers and bus tables.

Running the 52-seat cafe on a two-lane rural highway in Alamance County is about as far away as you can get from Nelson's last job as chief executive officer of Boca Raton, Fla.-based Office Depot. Nelson spent more than three decades in corporate America and became CEO of the office-supply giant in 2000. When he retired in 2004, the Fortune 500 company had about 1,100 stores and annual revenue topping $12 billion.

"I said, 'No more gigs,'" he says. "No public boards, no public gigs, no public companies."

Nelson, in his 50s then, retired in Florida. But his daughter, Suzanne Nelson, a former journalist based in Washington, D.C., had moved to North Carolina and taken up farming. When she asked for a loan to buy a 60-acre plot, the elder Nelson found himself playing the role of business adviser and, sometimes, farmhand. He milked cows, mended fences, drove a tractor and more.

As Suzanne's interest in local, organic agriculture grew, so did Nelson's. She eventually accumulated 400 acres near the tiny town of Saxapahaw. Reverence Farms, which raises beef, pork, sheep, chickens and turkeys, became a family business, with Nelson's son, Connor, quitting his job in Seattle and moving his family to Alamance County to join his sister and father. "We call him 'bureau chief of management services,'" Nelson says. "He does it all," including ordering supplies, bookkeeping and managing construction.

The family had considered a farm-to-table restaurant to serve locally grown food, eventually. But when Suzanne Nelson saw a for-lease sign on a closed roadside restaurant about three years ago, she called her father.

"I laughed and said, 'Suzanne, we're not going to do a cafe right now,"'...