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07/08/2007
Keeping Pace With DemandOryana's growth reflects public's taste in food
Stephanie Slawnik and her 3-year-old son Charlie Slawnik leave Oryana after buying lunch. TRAVERSE CITY — Shoppers bustle in, then leave with full grocery carts, while a crowd gathers at the lunch counter, marking another busy day at a burgeoning market at 10th and Lake streets. Oryana Food Cooperative has never looked better to customers like Peg May. She remembers the co-op from its early days, when it operated on a shoestring budget in a series of tiny shops with barely enough room to run a cart down the aisle. Now it's finishing a $2 million expansion and retail sales are expected to top $6 million this year. "We were just remarking about how great everything looks,” May said. "They're really doing a wonderful job.” The co-op has evolved from meager origins in the early 1970s as a back-porch buying club that struggled to make ends meet. Now, it's a retail powerhouse that's quadrupled its sales in the past decade. The public's growing interest in natural foods and other household items, as well as the co-op's 4,000 dedicated members, combined to make it succeed over the years. The co-op is set up as a state nonprofit organization run by a board of directors, and sells strictly organic and natural foods and products, many of them produced locally, at higher prices than a typical grocery store. Oryana was the first food co-op in the country to become a certified organic retailer five years ago, and is part of a national association of more than 100 food co-ops. "The story is there was just a bunch of people who wanted access to good food at reasonable prices,” general manager Robert Struthers said. "It shows that we understand what organics are all about.” It's also provided natural food producers a place to sell products and grow their businesses. "Oryana was, so to speak, our bread and butter as far as keeping us growing,” said Jan Shireman-Grabowski, who runs Pleasanton Brick Oven Bakery with her husband, Gerard. The bakery recently relocated to The Village at the Grand Traverse Commons to keep up with a growing demand for their organic bread products, due in part to the growth of Oryana. "We've really been growing together over the years,” she said. "If people can come together over food, that's a good thing.” The co-op moved to its present location in the old Brown lumber store at 10th and Lake streets in 1997, a year before Struthers was hired. "People thought it would be more room than the co-op ever needed,” he said. But within a few years the new location was bursting at the seams with a growing inventory of organic foods, and the co-op also needed space for expanded offerings of ready-made food, coffee and other items. The Oryana board looked at several options, including expansion or finding a new location, but Struthers said the board was committed to keeping the co-op in Traverse City. "We feel very strongly that what we do adds value to the community,” he said. The work began last fall with construction of a new addition. The co-op moved in to the new space and then closed about a third of the existing store to remodel. It reopened that space, then started to renovate the remaining two-thirds of the store, and that should be completed by late this month, Struthers said. When complete, the project will add about 10,000-square feet to the co-op, including 9,000-square feet in expanded retail space. The food service area is about 900-square feet and has indoor seating for 20 patrons, plus more outdoor seating. It also was a certified "green building” project that used recycled and energy-efficient material in keeping with the co-op's mission. Struthers said sales volume is up about 15 percent this year, even with the all the construction. Robin Hudson, who lives south of Leland, said renovations made the store more customer-friendly. "I think it's great; it makes it a lot easier to get in and out,” she said. Hudson buys about half of her groceries and other household items like shampoo at Oryana. Her background is in the natural food business and she appreciates the care taken in selecting the store's merchandise. "They go through everything on the shelves to make sure it's OK,” Hudson said. Struthers said that's what sets the co-op apart from other stores, and why he believes the operation will keep growing. "The bottom line is that we happen to have the right message, the right approach and the right ethics to provide our customers what they're looking for,” he said.
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