08/20/2026
I have started writing this post in my head probably a hundred times, and I still don't know that there are really words for it.
After six years, **Southern Mess Nutrition will be closing the doors at our current Sour Lake location effective August 31st.** 💔
This is not a decision I wanted to make. Due to circumstances beyond my control involving our current building and location, I've reached the point where I know we have to close this chapter and figure out a different way forward.
For me, this one goes a lot deeper than closing the doors of a business.
Sour Lake is home. I graduated from Hardin-Jefferson, I've lived the majority of my life in this community, and Southern Mess Nutrition is actually my **second business in Sour Lake**.
Years ago, we had Daybreak Cafe and Daylight Donuts, where we served breakfast and lunch and were blessed to be part of this community for five years. After Hurricane Ike damaged our building and repairs weren't made, that chapter came to an end.
Years later, I was blessed enough to open another set of doors in Sour Lake—and for the last six years, **Southern Mess Nutrition has become so much more than a business to me.**
We've made thousands of teas, served breakfasts and lunches, tried new things, changed things, laughed a LOT, cried a little, celebrated good news, talked through bad days and made friendships I will carry with me long after these doors close.
Some of my favorite memories aren't the big events at all.
They're the regulars who come in, sit down and stay awhile.
The ones who come for a tea and end up staying to chit-chat.
The morning conversations over breakfast.
The laughing, the picking on each other, the catching up on everybody's lives—and yes, sometimes the crying too.
That's the part you can't put a price on. 🩵
So while **August 31st will be the end of Southern Mess Nutrition at this location, it is NOT the end of Southern Mess Nutrition.**
I'm still looking for a new place for us to call home. I haven't found the right one yet, but I'm not giving up.
In the meantime, we're just going to do things a little differently.
🩵 **Tea preps will still be available for pickup in Sour Lake at a different location.**
🩵 **Southern Mess Junkies in Beaumont will also become a pickup location for dry tea preps.**
🩵 We're working on options for **to-go Alani's and meal replacement shakes** that you can grab and prepare at home or take with you on the go.
🩵 I will be **keeping the Southern Mess Nutrition phone number**, so you'll still be able to call and place your prep orders just like before.
And we have some **prep specials coming before the end of the month**, so STAY TUNED! We will post all the details about ordering, pickup locations and what's available.
**This Saturday will most likely be our final day serving food** so that we can begin preparing the store for closing at the end of the month. I'll share more information about that as well.
And I want to make one other thing VERY clear:
**Southern Mess Junkies in Beaumont is NOT closing!** 🩵
In fact, Southern Mess Junkies will be helping us keep a little piece of Southern Mess Nutrition going while I figure out exactly what our next chapter looks like.
I'm sad. I'm disappointed. And if I'm being truthful, this hurts.
But I've learned before that sometimes closing one door doesn't mean the story is over. Sometimes you just have to figure out another way.
So I'm choosing to look at this as **the end of a location—not the end of Southern Mess Nutrition.**
To every employee who has worked beside me, every customer who became a regular, every regular who became a friend, and every person who has supported one or both of my Sour Lake businesses through all these years:
**Thank you.**
Thank you for sitting at our tables.
Thank you for drinking our teas.
Thank you for eating our food.
Thank you for the conversations, the laughter, the tears, the friendships and the memories.
Thank you for allowing me to be a small-town business owner in the community I've called home for most of my life.
I hope you'll come see us between now and August 31st. Take a picture. Grab your favorite tea. Sit down and visit for a little while. And if you have a favorite Southern Mess memory, **please share it with me.** I'd love to hear them.
I'm going through six years' worth of pictures now, and I can't wait to share some of those memories with all of you. 🩵
**This isn't goodbye.**
It's just time for Southern Mess Nutrition to start a new chapter...
**Stay tuned…
**🩵Jodie🩵**
