USC IT professor also stays busy with food gigs

By Mike Switzer

Published July 24, 2024 at 6:30 AM EDT

Dr. Nesh Hikmet, IT technology professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia and co-owner of Tom’s Creek Family Farms in Hopkins, S.C., the Farmers Market Xchange in Columbia, and the Tom’s Creek Family Farms Mobile Market.

Food deserts are defined as places where fruit, vegetables, low-fat protein sources and whole grains are not generally or consistently available. Our next guest’s farm has taken steps to help alleviate that situation in one of our state’s, and in fact region’s, most dire locales in that situation: zip code 29203 in Columbia. Mike Switzer interviews Dr. Nesh Hikmet, an information technology professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, as well as co-owner of Tom’s Creek Family Farms in Hopkins, SC, the Farmers Market Xchange in Columbia (where he is known as the “bread man”), and the Tom’s Creek Family Farms Mobile Market.

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Mike Switzer

After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.

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