Okay, so maybe you don’t share a Tea Party-ish apocalyptic vision of the near-future, and perhaps you want to explore some ancestral roots. Maybe you’d just like to transform those strawberries in your garden into lip-smacking jam or that ridiculously prolific tomato crop into jars of spicy salsa.

Bill, 46, is quiet-mannered and polite, an electrical engineer for General Motors by day, supportive husband and partner to the business in his spare time. He has the temperament of a tenured philosophy professor: always willing to listen, while giving only the slightest indication the wheels are constantly whizzing in his head.

Co-owners Kevin Watersian and Rushit Bhimani opened on Monday, March 15 with a limited selection of dry goods, but the store will be fully stocked with produce by Thursday.

Before Mullins opens her kitchen on any given morning at the Mega Mall on US-27, north of Lansing, she never quite knows what her little café will offer. She rolls up her sleeves, checks out what ingredients she has onhand, and lists her decisions on a whiteboard near a dozen seats around a few small tables.

Don’t expect a rectangular slab of greasy pizza or a ladle-full of slop from a hair-netted lunch lady in the residence hall dining areas at Michigan State University. The days of “mystery meat surprise” for lunch are over, for students, faculty, staff and even the general public.

The time it takes to get a Zoup! restaurant up and running after naming a franchisee varies greatly, Ersher said. Securing real estate is usually the most cumbersome obstacle, typically taking anywhere from one to nine months. After a location is secured, a new Zoup! restaurant is within a couple months of opening.