By Jim Cavan

Opening a restaurant is hard enough on its own, particularly in this frosty economic climate. But how about opening your restaurant in an actual snowstorm? Michelle Lozuaway, owner of Fresh Local Bayside, had to contend with both.

“We initially planned to open in early December,” says Lozuaway, “but when the ice storm hit, we had to set it back another week. Not exactly the most auspicious beginning”

Luckily for Lozuaway, the Fresh Local name was already a known commodity here on the Seacoast: theirs is the bright orange, bio-diesel-fueled truck, omnipresent in downtown Portsmouth, which has since early 2008 been vending quality lunch cart fare prepared as quickly as it is carefully – sandwiches, burgers, soups and falafel, all made from seasonal, local ingredients.

Initially Lozuaway, a lawyer by training, and her partner, classically-trained chef Josh Lanahan, wanted to feel the pride of serving fresh, locally-inspired eats without the enormous overhead and pressure associated with a full-service restaurant. Indeed the couple had already been down that path, having run Portsmouth’s Saucy Grace, where the two met, for 2 years before selling it in 2005.

Try as they may have to avoid it, it wasn’t long after launching the Fresh Local truck that the couple got the epicureal itch. Only this time they were aiming more for the blue collars than the black ties. With the goal of building on the success of the lunch cart, Lozuaway and Lanahan opened Fresh Local Bayside late last year. Located in Newington on the Great Bay waterfront, the restaurant offered stunning vistas and fast, fresh, delicious meals in equal measure.

But while Lozuaway and Lanahan are optimistic about the future of the Fresh Local brand, they are by no means resting on their laurels. Indeed, to say that the couple has ambitious plans for the future would be an understatement.

First on the agenda is a plan to reconfigure an 800-square foot section of their 18th century Newington farmhouse into a quaint, sit-down style, reservation-only bistro. The project, which Lozuaway says well most likely be christened Fresh Local Hearthside, may even one day feature full-on culinary classes, with chef Lanahan providing interactive cooking lessons that allow customers to experience their meal prep-to-palate. According to Lozuaway, the idea came about over an intimate dinner of local lamb pizzas baked in the home’s quant beehive brick oven, in the company of  friends.

“Even though we all realized the house is incredibly rustic, we felt that didn’t matter,” recalls Lozuway. “In fact, we thought that would be a benefit. There’s so much character in the house, and given how local the food we were eating was, we felt like we could have opened it the very next day.”

The couple plans to break ground by bringing in new flooring to the first-floor space by the end of the year, and ideally would have the operation up and running by next spring.

Fostering a burgeoning local brand that practices precisely what it preaches would seem to strike most as a commendable end in itself. But Michelle Lozuaway is not most people. Far from resting on her brand’s local laurels, Lozuaway wants to use the lessons learned and gains garnered to help others on the Seacoast achieve similar goals. To that end, Lozuaway plans to donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale of Fresh Local’s famous “purritos” – a sort of Panini-burrito hybrid made with pitas baked by a Methuen, Massachusetts Lebanese family – to start a fund to help area food vendors.

Think of it as a kind of trust fund, from which local restaurateurs could secure micro-loans in order to invest in their business – such as buy an ice cream-maker, something Lozuaway herself wanted to do but, because of the tight economy, had to put off. The fund would serve as a means of buttressing the local economy, something for which Lozuaway has long lobbied.

“I think it’s imperative that we start focusing on our local economies to help stabilize the economy as a whole,” Lozuaway explains. “If Farmers and people who grow our food make more money, that’s money they can then turn around and spend on shoes or other products, which in turn helps the local economy. But it all starts with food: if that part of the economy is outsourced, that totally undermines the local economy as a whole.”

While only a year removed since Fresh Local Bayside opened its doors amid the frigid fallout of last year’s epic ice storm, the goals its owners share for the future paint a picture of a business wise beyond its years. Lots of people talk about sourcing fresh and local, but for Michelle Lozuaway, Josh Lanahan and the rest of the Fresh Local family, it has been, is, and always will be – quite literally – all in the name.