Oryana Celebrates 40 Years, Plans Second Location

In 1973, a small group of health food lovers came together as a buyer's club to purchase natural food products in bulk.

Over the next four decades, that small “back porch operation” run by volunteers evolved into a 5,000 member-owner cooperative. Today, Oryana Natural Foods Market averages an annual $12+ million in sales, employs 115 staff members and sits on 9,000 square feet of real estate on Lake Street in downtown Traverse City. Yet the store continues to operate according to its founding mission: providing high-quality food, produced in ecologically sound ways, at fair value to the community.

In honor of the cooperative's 40th anniversary celebration, The Ticker sat down with Steve Nance, current general manager at Oryana, and David Poinsett, one of the store's first general managers in the 1970s, to look back at the history of the store and plans for its future – including a long-anticipated second location.

Humble Beginnings
“We were just a bunch of hippies who had a crazy vision -- natural food -- could become mainstream.” That's how Poinsett describes Oryana's origins in the 1970s, when the store bounced between buildings downtown before settling in at 123-1/2 East Front Street in 1974 – a centralized location, though accessible only by two flights of stairs.

The store's early challenges, while daunting at the time, seem almost comical in retrospect. Poinsett became GM shortly after thieves stole $1,500 – nearly all of the store's capital – after realizing staff were hiding the money each night in a container of beans. Poinsett helped rebuild the bankrupt store by keeping margins low on staple items and high on luxury ones, learning on the fly to keep records and pay taxes (“I once wrote the IRS a letter in longhand...explaining our records were, to the best of my knowledge, 'honest and reasonable,'” he laughs), and secretly sleeping on the floor each night while earning a $1/hour salary.

Those early sacrifices paid off. By the mid-1980s, Oryana had moved to a new location on Randolph Street, introduced its iconic logo, began producing tofu and tempeh in-house and averaged $370,000 in annual sales.

Growing Pains
By the late 1980s, Oryana had reached the $1 million mark in sales. The next decade would be defined by exponential growth, as well as accompanying growing pains. Because of the cooperative's governance structure – member-owners elect a board of directors, which in turn oversee the GM and staff – major decisions like moving to Lake Street in the 1990s, adding new product lines (meat, beer and wine) and earning the first organic retailer certification of any co-op in the country required meticulous planning and lengthy approval processes.

“Grocery is a very thin-margin business. Big moves have to be thought through carefully,” explains Nance, who first served on Oryana's board of directors during its 2007 expansion (during which time Lake Street Cafe was added) before becoming GM in 2010.

One of those “big moves” was broadening efforts to attract a more diverse customer base. Aware of criticisms that the store's products were too expensive and that only select demographics of shoppers were welcome (what Nance describes as a perceived “cliquey-ness”), Oryana eliminated its non-member surcharge, focused on educating customers on “the true cost of food” by highlighting farm and vendor relationships, and ramped up in-house food production to cater to lunch crowds.

“Our goal is to be the people's grocery store,” explains Nance. “We became very intentional on giving people a welcoming, fun experience that was price-competitive...but still high-quality.”

The “Imagined” Future
In 2012, Nance – with input from his staff and board – created a vision for the store called Oryana Imagined 2022. In it, a list of dream goals is outlined for the next decade, including green renovations of the Lake Street store, a new full-service catering program, Oryana kiosks at Munson Medical Center and Northwestern Michigan College, $25 million in annual sales – and a second satellite store.

That last aspiration, long-rumored, is likely to be the first realized. Nance predicts development of a second location, targeted for Acme Village Center, could come in the next 18-24 months. Like the Lake Street location, the satellite would be a full-service store including its own cafe, coffee bar and meat and seafood counter.

In spite of possible stiffer competition in the future (acknowledges Nance: “we've essentially primed the market for a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods to come in"), Oryana Imagined 2022 is the reason both men remain confident in the store's long-term sustainability. After 40 years of struggle, growth and hard-won success, imagining another 10 – or 40 years – no longer seems quite so crazy.

Oryana will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a free, community celebration today at Grand Traverse Commons from 2-6 p.m. Live music, food, beverages and activities will be provided. For more information, visit www.oryana.coop.