The safe bet was never the plan. J. Parker & Company is the home for everything John Parker builds: software, hand-forged metalwork, and whatever comes next.
What John is building
Software for independent freight brokers. Dottie quotes loads straight from email, keeps the shipper CRM, vets carriers and tracks every load through to payment, all in one tool that works alongside the systems brokers already use. She knows freight.
Parker & Reid
Forgeworks
I’m new to the forge and learning the craft alongside Erick Forsyth at The Three Graces Studio. The name is for two men in my family: a Sloss Furnaces ironworker and a Praco coal miner.
“the Church Bridge”
Working name
An app that helps a church carry Sunday’s message into the rest of the week, built alongside a partner congregation. Each church’s data stays its own.
Founded and run by John Parker
Opened May 7, 2019 in Five Points South as the first CBD-only store inside Birmingham city limits, then grew to a second store in Hoover. The name was built to win local search in an industry that can’t buy ads. Shut down as Alabama moved to ban hemp.
Same-day delivery of beer, wine, spirits and hemp products across Birmingham, launched May 31, 2022, with its own customer app, driver app and inventory system. More than 9,000 users in its first ten months. Closed as Alabama moved to ban hemp.
The Five Points South bar, founded in 1995, that John bought in 2021 and sold in 2024. Its rare combined bar and package-store license made BUZD possible. In 2023 it made statewide news for giving away free fentanyl test strips to help keep people alive.
John’s idea, run with his partners out of Five Points South from August 2020. A farm-to-shelf grocery built during COVID so Alabama farmers who had lost their fine-dining accounts still had somewhere to sell.
Registered lobbyist, Alabama
A grassroots coalition John co-founded in 2021 to fight a proposed ban on hemp products. As a registered lobbyist he wrote the 21-and-over bill that became law in 2023, which kept hemp, THCA included, legal in Alabama until it came under attack nationwide. In 2025 he pushed SB255, a framework to regulate hemp through the state’s Hemp Division and keep it out of gas stations, and testified before the Senate health committee.
Selected coverage
John Parker
Good names, good branding, high-quality, clever everything. I kinda don’t understand how you’d live otherwise. I don’t know how you can sit still either.
I’m John Parker. Born and raised in Birmingham.
I came up in the service industry, got tired of working for somebody else, and started building my own, most of it in Five Points South. A CBD store in 2019. A farm-to-shelf grocery during COVID, so the farmers I’d met through fine dining still had somewhere to sell. Dave’s Pub in 2021. BUZD, a delivery app, in 2022.
When the legislature came for the hemp industry, I registered as a lobbyist and went to Montgomery myself. I wrote the 21-and-over bill that became law in 2023, and it kept hemp with THCA legal in Alabama until it came under attack nationwide. As the state moved to ban it, I sold Dave’s, closed BUZD and shut down Near to Me.
Now I build software for industries I know firsthand. Dottie came out of my time as a freight broker in flatbed and heavy haul. And I’ve started learning to forge, alongside Erick Forsyth of The Three Graces Studio. Parker & Reid Forgeworks is named for my family: Theodore Roosevelt Parker, an ironworker at Sloss Furnaces, and George Harrison Reid, a coal miner at Praco.
I’m also restoring my first classic car, a Corvette, and have rebuilt almost all of its mechanical parts myself.
Partnerships, press
J. Parker & Company LLC · Hoover, Alabama