Earth Fare, shown here in Augusta, Ga., began in Asheville, N.C., in 1975 as “Dinner for the Earth” and now has 13 stores.(Photo / Contributed )
Johnson City will become home to the Tri-Cities’ first natural foods
supermarket later this year when Fletcher, N.C.-based Earth Fare opens
for business in a space near East Tennessee State University.
“We’ve been looking at Johnson City for a couple years,
actually, and it was just difficult to find a site,” Earth Fare CEO
Michael Cianciarulo said Monday. He said the company will put a couple
of million dollars into retrofitting the 24,000-square-foot space –
currently home to a White’s Fresh Foods – at 1735 W. State of Franklin
before opening in June, and eventually hire about 100 employees.
Cianciarulo said Tri-Citians can expect a store that caters to,
among others, the vegetarian, health food and epicurean markets, that
sources much of its product locally and that is a good employer and
corporate citizen.
“We think it’s going to be something that brings a lot of good products and options to the people of the Tri-Cities,” he said.
The origins of Earth Fare lie in “Dinner for the Earth,” a small
natural food store that opened in Asheville in 1975, changed its name
to Earth Fare in 1993, upsized in 1994 and opened its second store, in
Charleston, S.C., in 1997. Today, Earth Fare has 13 stores in four
states, with three more under way, but still espouses the values that
spawned the first store, at least according to the “Mission and Values”
section of the company’s Web site:
“We support the empowerment, development and wellness of our
customers and staff by operating a successful business focused on
education, fair trade, organic and local foods, and other healthy
choices for the environment and ourselves.”
Earth Fare’s pending arrival means the 24,000-square-foot
anchor of the University Plaza strip center won’t sit waiting on a
tenant. That was good news Monday to Larry England, who owns a
Cartridge World store occupying one of the center’s smaller spaces.
“I was in a different business before this in a strip center
and one of our main anchors went dark about a year after we had moved
in – it really made a huge impact on our traffic,” England said.
England is excited about the arrival of Earth Fare and expects
it to have positive effects on the 20-year-old center. “I think it’ll
help draw additional tenants,” he said.
Cianciarulo said Johnson City probably would have a store
already were it not for the difficulty in locating the chosen site,
which he called a good size (Earth Fare’s prototype is 27,000 square
feet) and good location for Johnson City and for access to shoppers
from other parts of the Tri-Cities.
“We have Johnson City people that travel a long way to buy
groceries,” Cianciarulo said. “We bring almost 30,000 items in one
building that may be available throughout the market in scattered
smaller stores, but can’t be found in one place.”
Earth Fares have full-service meat departments, large produce
sections, gourmet cheese that is cut and wrapped on-site after weekly
deliveries from New York City and Europe, and extensive beer and wine
selections, though the Johnson City store won’t have a wine section.
The new store also will feature a deli/cafe, a large selection of
nutritional supplements and, Cianciarulo said, selections from local
farms and small businesses.
“We’re going to go out and open the door to anybody that we can
support in the local arena,” Cianciarulo said. “It could be somebody
with a marinade sauce that’s locally produced or a small farmer. We’re
buying broccoli from Boone, N.C., and shipping it to all our stores, we
purchased millions of dollars worth of local products last year, and we
go out of our way, no matter how small a guy is, to try and support
them.”
Despite becoming the country’s third-largest natural foods
retailer (sales exceeded $100 million last year and its plans call for
opening five or six stores a year), Cianciarulo said the company is
sticking to an approach that benefits employees and seems to avoid
running the “little guy” – such as Johnson City’s two existing health
food stores – out of business.
“We bring more exposure to what they stand for, and they seem
to thrive after we come in,” Cianciarulo said of independent
competitors.
He said Earth Fare offers good benefits and gives full-time
jobs to about 65 percent of employees, compared to about 30 percent in
the supermarket industry as a whole.
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