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Food Network stars

On Saturday, those watching Food Network at 4 p.m. will be able to see an episode of Food Court Wars that features sets local interior design company, Copper Leaf, had a hand in making.

Copper Leaf Interior Design Studio served as the design team for the episode, “Brunchaholics vs. Modern Southern Table,” which originally aired last Sunday. The episode will air again Saturday.

“We were their design production team,” said Copper Leaf owner Pam Holschuh. “We came up with the logo, branded the space…We did everything. It was invigorating.”

Food Court Wars is a show hosted by celebrity chef Tyler Florence where two teams of aspiring food entrepreneurs go up against each other in order to win their own food court restaurant. The restaurant is rent-free for a year, a prize worth $100,000. Each week the focus is on a different mall across the United States. The episode Copper Leaf participated in was at Colony Square Mall in Zanesville.

Holschuh said Copper Leaf was found through Houzz.com, a professional design website. She said Food Network could have found any number of other designers who were much closer to Zanesville.

In fact, Robyn Spataro, interior designer at Copper Leaf, said they could have gone to Columbus instead.

“They could have chosen any number of designers in Columbus and they chose us, which is awesome,” she said. “It was a privilege.”

Spataro said just getting the phone call from Food Network was a highlight, adding, “This is prime time TV. This is great.”

Spataro said the key was being super creative; there is always a limited budget and materials must be able to be taken down after the competition.

“We had to be really creative with what we could actually put on the walls,” she said, adding that nothing permanent could be put up. “There was a small, limited budget. That’s always a fun challenge.”

Holschuh said the design team had about a month to work on getting an idea together and then had very limited time to actually set up.

“We had about 24 hours to actually redo the space,” she said. “We had to really pull it all together.”

She said she didn’t remember much of November, when filming for the episode occurred.

“This was a very fast and furious method,” Holschuh said. “It was great.”

Holschuh said she wanted to give credit and say thanks to all the local businesses in Marietta, Boaz, Vincent, McConnelsville, and New Albany, who helped make Copper Leaf’s venture at Food Court Wars a success.

Holschuh said participating in Food Court Wars is something she and the team will never forget.

“It’s something we will always remember; it’s not something you get to do every day,” she said.

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