Natural Food Retailers Association

by Alice Shindelar

Mermber Services Manager

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Rising tide, owned by Jerry Farrell, reigns in Glen Cove, New York.

AS: Can you give me a little bit of background on how you got started? JF: We started as a very small store in 1976. It was an 800 sq foot store, my best friend (Michael Melia) from high school was studying macrobiotics in Boston and he came to visit me and put together a class. He decided that he would like to move back down into Long Island and there was really no place to shop for bulk natural foods here so we would drive into New York city, which was an hour away. We decided it would be great to start our own store. So we rented an old deli and started buying from Erewhon. We were the first to sell grains, beans, nuts, miso and dried fruit in bulk in the area. We were the first on LI to sell tofu, no one really knew about it. We went to a Japanese tofu maker in New York. We’d go get these items and hardly make any money on them. We would drive into Manhattan getting unique items, spend a whole day getting them and then sell them at such a small markup. We didn’t make any money but we made a lot of people happy. We started to get a reputation that this was a great place to come. We were the first store on Long Island to sell organic produce. We would buy an airfreight container from Albert’s Organics, who had a warehouse in Los Angeles, and fly it into JFK. Those midnight trips to the airport were a lot of fun.  Carrying organic produce didn’t make us money, but again, it brought people from all over into our store. This was the early 80s. It was a time when we were really excited; we were young, living altruistically, trying to save the world. We moved to a larger location in 1983. We’ve been here for 26 years now, its 3000 ft retail. 

Did you always see yourself in natural foods? I was a Health and Phys Ed teacher out of college. I was teaching part time when we started, but the business is what held, it was more exciting. 

What is one of the biggest challenges you have faced as an owner? In the 90s we had to compete successfully with Whole Foods and the supermarkets who were starting to carry similar items. We had to find ourselves again. 

Find your place in the competition?

For years in the 80s we had an exclusive product that was able to attract people from all over. Then Whole Foods opened, and the supermarkets started carrying natural products and people had another option.  Faced with declining sales, we had to reinvent ourselves. We did that by concentrating on the supplement department because we were originally a food oriented store. We were able educate ourselves and our customers on the supplement part of the business. When you focus on educating you gain their respect and confidence. Customers know they can come to you and get their questions answered. You remove the fears. We decided to sell only certified organic produce. In our deli we focus on naturally raised poultry, wild salmon and enzyme rich raw dishes. These are items that Whole Foods and the supermarkets don’t have, we created a niche in our community. Sales have grown over the last five years and we’ve become more of a community oriented store.

Where do you see yourself going in the future? I never thought I would be in this industry for thirty years. Albert Lusk has held the vision that an organization of like minded retailers with similar issues can successfully compete together. There are so many things that we can accomplish due to that scale. I really believe that INFRA will continue to grow and that retailers need to look at what they can do together. A lot of people who have been in this industry for so many years do this out of the belief that we are trying to change the world. It has been discouraging for us to see the industry leaning towards the larger concerns and watch our standards erode. With INFRA we have a forum to collectively deal with these challenges.