I’m Cheryl Hughes on the owner of The Whole Wheatery and I started my journey in the natural products industry in 1979 when I went to work for a company that actually pioneered nutrition in California. And that was Gladys Lindberg and I worked for Lindberg Nutrition.
Lindberg Nutrition
At the time they had 13 stores and they were really right there in the forefront with Adele Davis, Linus Pauling, Carlton Fredericks — all of those girls and boys were the ones that really got this industry to another level.
Mrs. Lindberg was actually the person that founded the pack a day because she had customers that were blind and they needed some of the supplements so she put them together in a little baggie for them at the time. There was only like vitamin A, vitamin C, lecithin, and brewer’s yeast.
But her story was so amazing and that when she started feeding her children well, they became rosy-cheeked and healthy and other parents wanted her information. So they birthed this company Lindberg Nutrition.
Nature’s Best
Lindberg Nutrition actually founded a warehouse distribution center called Nature’s Best which today is known as KeHE.
So there is a great evolution of history in the natural products industry.
When I first worked for Lindberg’s, I used to go to the trade shows all the time and I got the opportunity to meet the people that founded these companies.
Natural Health Trade Shows
I mean there was Rachael Perry, who was the queen of cosmetics at the time. I actually did shake the hand of Linus Pauling and Jeffrey Bland. Linus Pauling, as you know instituted and pioneered all the work in vitamin C.
Dr. Wilfred Shute did all the work in vitamin E. He was there.
And from the Merv Griffin Show, there were the people that did Life Extension – Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw.
The founder of Arrowhead Mills, Frank Ford.
These people walked the store floors.
It was like going to Hollywood of the natural products industry. So those trade shows were absolutely filled with a plethora of people and information and they were so exciting to attend and they still are natural products. Expo East and Expo West is full of the same kind of energy.
It’s almost a tangible energy.
People inventing and creating and coming up with new products all along. So fast forward I decided to start my own business and figured that Lindbergh was a great groundbreaking way to get in the natural products industry and I learned what I needed to learn and opened my own store in 1983 and I’m still here it’s 36 years later.
The Whole Wheatery, Lancaster California
And it was a great experience because we started out with a little cafe a few sit down seats. We did soup and sandwiches and shakes and smoothies which we still do today soups and sandwiches shakes and smoothies. But in a much larger format, we had three or four people that worked for us.
Now we have almost 50, but the other thing that I would say about the interesting parts of the early days is I had the opportunity to go back to school actually and get my degree in nutrition counseling. The National Institute of Nutritional Education was an online course that allowed us to be able to counsel and talk to people about nutrition.
Howard Pollack, Nature’s Best, Rainbow Acres
The other thing that was really great is that I decided that I wanted to be part of the industry and I met retailers like Howard Pollack from Rainbow Acres who actually was the original founder of Nature’s Best buy selling it over to the Lindburg Nutrition family.
And Howard said to me if you really want to get involved in this industry you need to sit on a board. And I go “board of what?”
Natural Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA)
He said a board of directors that serves the natural products industry. And so I sat on the NNFA which was the Natural Nutritional Foods Association at the time.
I served there for probably 12 years during that time we had several experiences that changed the face of the industry.
Natural Labeling and Education Act (NLEA)
We had the in NLEA, the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, which was the first major fight to make sure that we protected consumers’ rights for advocacy of nutritional supplements and their ability to buy them over the counter.
Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA)
Ten years later we went back in 1994, and we did that to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA).
I was actually very prominent in working for that because we helped to create something called the blackout which we showed consumers and customers across the United States what it would be like if they did not have access to dietary supplements if they had to go to their doctor and they couldn’t just walk into a natural product store and buy it off the shelf.
So we had to lobby Congress. We had to get petitions. We had to blackout sales for a day and this was an amazing event that went all across the United States. And retailers participated and that’s how we gathered enough signatures to actually get that really in front of Congress and really go after Congress and say look we need access to this. We met with Congressmen we met with Senators we advocated on Capitol Hill.
We did a lot of work and we finally got DSHEA passed. Now DSHEA is still the law that’s in existence today that protects the dietary supplement industry and allows us to continue to sell dietary supplements over the counter without a prescription.
It also has all the regulatory backbone that’s necessary for the FDA to do anything that would be a problem with a dietary supplement. You know that adverse effects and adverse events are reported so the FDA knows what’s going on. They get the opportunity to look at a product to see if that product can go to market. So all the regulatory promotions. I mean regulatory backbone is still in DSHEA today.
Organic Trade Association (OTA)
So back up a little further and even during that time I was able to participate in something called the Organic Trade Association which was just being birthed and OTA is what actually started to work within NOSB, the National Organic Standards Board, at the USDA and develop standards for organic retailing.
I served on the board that did the Organic Retailing Standards and there how you do organic handling of products. So that was a fabulous experience I’ve been a member of OTA and still am today. They’re back looking at that.
Good Organic Retail Practice (GORP)
GORP, which is the Good Organic Retail Practice part of the organic legislation. So how they can upgrade and maybe make that a little bit more available and known to all retailers across the United States. So we keep and maintain the integrity of organics from farm to table.
So that was a wonderful foray. I served on that for several years.
Food Market Institute (FMI)
Then I got involved with FMI, which is the Food Market Institute, which is the big grocery conglomerate. And I served on the Natural Products Board for them and that was a whole different experience because we’re talking about stores that in those early days didn’t have anything but standard grocery items. And what we found was they were starting to bring in natural products.
Well, fast forward and take a look today baby because natural products are at every supermarket, every 7-Eleven, everywhere.
Natural Foods Everywhere
And I remember one of the wishes of the industry, as I heard it in the early days, was to make natural foods available and affordable for everybody and it seems like that’s becoming truer and truer every day.
So those experiences of getting involved in the industry serving on boards was just an incredibly fertile ground for me to continue to embrace the industry that I love and that I serve.
Independent Natural Foods Retailers Association (INFRA)
And then along came an organization called INFRA, the Independent Natural Foods Retailers Association.
Competition got tighter and tighter, Big Box carried more and more natural products. Independent stores had to look for a way to band together and to be able to work as a virtual chain so that we can have leveraged buying power so that we can have an availability for products so that we could become a player in the arena with the Whole Foods, the Albertsons, and the Costcos.
So INFRA was born out of that idea to serve the independent retailer as a virtual chain and give us access to products at a fair and reasonable price so that we could compete on that level.
It’s been an amazing journey. I ended up serving on that board too.
I absolutely love the opportunity to see how we can feed the planet and make a difference.
Look at the climate control issues that we’re having.
Work with climate collaborative work with the non-GMO project work with the Organic Foods Association.
Integrate all of these things and be the messengers because it is the independent natural foods retailers that carry this story forward.
We are always the voice. We launch new products.
We stand at the forefront of protecting consumers’ right to be able to have products and the natural foods industry available. We encourage those entrepreneurs that create these incredible products and we bring these products to market with the story behind them.
- What companies do they support?
- How do they think?
- Who do they stand behind?
- Who do they make alignments with?
- Who do they give money to?
- How can we make the planet better?
- How can we serve by telling people stories of the great products that they make?
Power of Independent Retailers
And that’s what the independents do all day long because we have the opportunity to one-on-one service our customers.
So in my journey and the natural foods industry from the late 70s until currently it’s an ever-evolving role of learning, of being able to embrace something new and pass on that information to change people’s lives to encourage them to support organics and biodynamic farming to be able to understand why that’s important to understand the difference that we can make in climate.
Sustainability
The difference that we can make in sustainability a product like supporting something like sustainably harvested palm. I mean for years and years harvesting palm destroyed the orangutan population.
Now we have a way to sustainably harvest palm and at the same time support the people in these countries that need supporting because they’re getting paid fair market wages.
So we have been an industry that has created Fair Trade.
We’ve created fair pricing. We have supported and advocated for that and actually taught consumers the importance of looking for these kinds of labels.
Non-Genetically Modified Organisms (Non-GMO)
We’ve stood behind the Non-GMO. We’ve proposed and supported and really actually told people the story of why organic integrity is so important in standing behind USDA organic and the certifications that go into it.
These stories are stories that need to be told and independent retailers do that the best of anyone. So I’m really proud to be a part of them.
And that’s my story.
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