It was difficult but necessary for Crystal Fontanes to quit her job during her first pregnancy. She was having health complications that made it safer for her to be at home, and her husband, a soldier who has been with the Army for eight years, was busy traveling for training exercises.
But after working for almost half her life and managing her own finances, being a stay-at-home mom with no income left her feeling off. Even after being home for four years and having her second child, she still struggled with the idea of not working for a paycheck.
“I was feeling like I’m not doing anything to bring money to the household,” Fontanes said. “My husband never made me feel like that, but sometimes your own mind starts thinking stuff like that.”
To earn some income, she used her culinary school experience and passion for cooking to start Abokado Sushi, a made-to-order sushi business, from her home in Raeford at the end of 2024. To get the word out, she started a Facebook business page and searched for groups where she could advertise for free. That’s when she found Fort Bragg Homemade, a Facebook group for military-affiliated businesses selling homemade goods. Veterans and military spouses offer baked goods and custom crafts like banners and T-shirts.
While sellers must be part of the military community, anyone can join the group to peruse and purchase.
“It’s like an in-person Etsy, but with baked goods and all that kind of good stuff,” said Lily Lawrence, founder of Fort Bragg Homemade. While some sellers do everything online, others put out their goods in stands across Fort Bragg and Fayetteville and have residents shop in person, Lawrence explained.
For Fontanes, Fort Bragg Homemade has been crucial in bringing in customers. She posts photos of her trays of intricate sushi rolls almost daily, and past customers tag Abokado Sushi when people ask for catering recommendations. With the extra income, Fontanes said her family is able to provide more for themselves and their kids.
“Now that I’m making a little bit of money, I’m feeling better,” she said. “It makes me proud of myself.”
Supporting the forgotten
Lawrence came up with the idea for a Facebook page where military spouses can sell crafts from their homes after she and her husband, an Army soldier, had a permanent change of station to Fort Hood in central Texas. The move required her to quit her job at a hotel in San Francisco, leaving her unemployed and struggling to find a job in her career field.
“I kept thinking, ‘What can I do to help? What can I do to keep myself busy and to help bring some sort of income in?’” Lawrence said.
Military spouses are disproportionately affected by unemployment. The average national unemployment rate was 4% in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The same year, 23% of active-duty military spouses reported being unemployed in the Military Family Lifestyle Survey, an annual survey of active-duty service members and their families by the national nonprofit Blue Star Families.
Many military spouses said in the survey that some of their struggles to find jobs stemmed from employers’ fears that they wouldn’t stay long because of how often military families have to move. Some employers were simply unwilling to hire or accommodate military-affiliated employees, they said.
Without a hotel near Fort Hood to hire her, Lawrence decided to earn money by making custom T-shirts and cakes and selling them to other military families on post. She then thought a Facebook group would make it easier for her and other military spouses to exchange and sell their homemade goods. So Fort Hood Homemade was born.
“I just wanted a space for us to showcase our work and be able to have a passive income for our families when we’re not able to work in an area we’re not familiar with,” Lawrence said.
Lawrence brought the Facebook group to Fort Bragg after her husband was relocated to the installation in 2019. The group now boasts almost 7,000 members.
Lawrence said members of the original Fort Hood Homemade group have gone on to create Fort Irwin Homemade and Fort Sill Homemade pages as their families moved. The “homemade” brand has even gone international, with former Fort Hood members starting a page for Camp Humphreys in South Korea.
To Lawrence, Fort Bragg Homemade and other installations’ Homemade pages offer a way for the broader military community and residents of military towns to support military spouses.
“They are so often forgotten,” she said. “Military spouses go through a lot, and they kind of get brushed to the side.”
Addressing the child care issue
Paratrooper’s Chocolate Bar sells a variety of chocolates and baked goods from of a stand outside founder Jazlyn Ortiz’s house in Fayetteville. Credit: Morgan Casey / CityView 
The inside of Paratrooper’s Chocolate Bar stand features a top shelf selling toys while the bottom’s fridges hold chocolate covered marshmallows, chocolate bars and other treats. Credit: Morgan Casey / CityView
Veterans like Jazlyn Ortiz are also sellers in Fort Bragg Homemade. Ortiz, the founder and owner of Paratrooper’s Chocolate Bar, sells a variety of chocolates, baked goods and drinks from a stand outside her home in Fayetteville.
Ortiz has been selling since 2017. In 2023, after getting out of the Army, she made Paratrooper’s Chocolate Bar her full-time job.
Being her own boss allows Ortiz to schedule and make the many health appointments she has as a disabled veteran without stress. It also eliminates any child care issues she would have working for a company full time as a single mother.
“Doing the bakery full time allows me to have my own schedule and take care of my daughter,” Ortiz said. “If there are any emergencies, I can just take off and take care of her.”
Child care is a universal issue for working parents in North Carolina and beyond, military-affiliated or not. In North Carolina, child care costs an average of $977 for an infant and $645 for a 4-year-old per month, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Only 20% of the state’s households can afford these costs, the institute found, and over half of military spouses reported child care costs as a reason they were unemployed in the 2024 Military Family Lifestyle Survey.
Because of the costs, working often doesn’t make financial sense for families, said Nicole Mary, a veteran, military spouse and an administrator of Fort Bragg Homemade. Mary said the entry-level jobs she was eligible for when she got out of the military would barely cover the child care costs she and her husband would need to pay if she worked full time.
She turned instead to Fort Hood Homemade and then Fort Bragg Homemade for income.
“Even if it’s a little bit of gas money that you can make by crafting so that you can go to the beach or something with your kids, or have a picnic at the park or something, it’s really beneficial,” Mary said. “Because, usually when you have one income and you have a couple of kids, you don’t have the extra money for you to do anything.”
For Ortiz, the income from Paratrooper’s Chocolate Bar pays for everything besides her basic bills, which are covered by her disability payments from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
“When people come and support me, whether they buy something or just help me spread the word, they’re helping out a single mom and my child,” Ortiz said. “They’re really, really helping us out.”
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.