Organic Produce Market Evolves From Hippie to Yuppie : Food: Changing business practices in the organic food industry have helped outlets such as the Yale Avenue Market become successful.

The Yale Avenue Market sits across the street from a folk music center and next door to a store selling Birkenstock sandals.

Inside, an employee wearing a floor-length, tie-dyed dress, Army boots and a brown derby stocks the shelves with buckwheat groats, soy mozzarella and tofu chili dogs.

But don’t mistake this cooperative organic food market for a leftover from the love bead generation.

What started in 1975 as a food-buying club operating out of a campus basement has made the switch from hippie to yuppie and operates with ‘90s savvy.

“The (organic food) industry survived for a long time on philosophy and philosophy alone. A lot of co-ops have gone under because of that,” said store manager Geri Knoebel. “There’s a need to be a sound business, and the industry is learning that and gaining credibility and awareness.”

That kind of new professionalism led to Yale Avenue’s grand opening last August as the San Gabriel Valley’s only natural-food cooperative market. There are organic food co-ops in Venice and Santa Monica, according to Claris Ritter-Lusk, director of communications for Albert’s Organics Inc., a nationwide organic produce shipping firm based in Los Angeles.

The store’s board of directors hired a consultant to help with the move from a garage to a prime commercial site in Claremont Village. They also hired a paid staff, headed by Knoebel, who managed natural food stores in Tucson.

Cooperatives have come a long way since they started in the 1960s and 1970s with quasi-revolutionary monikers like The Food Conspiracy, Knoebel said.

“In those days they had little angels and devil figures and they would put angels out next to the foods they considered good for you and the devils out by the unhealthful foods. These days we’re not quite so judgmental,” she said.

Or quite so anti-Establishment.

Yale Avenue Market secured a $10,000 loan from the National Cooperative Bank to help with opening expenses and has just put Ingeborg U. V. Kendall, director of marketing in the business program at the University of La Verne, on the board to lend her expertise to the venture.

Sophisticated marketing and elbow-rubbing with the Chamber of Commerce have paid off, Knoebel said. The store now has 377 member households--up from 170 before it made the switch from private co-op to public market--and draws shoppers from all over the San Gabriel Valley and from as far away as Riverside, San Bernardino, Yucca Valley and Perris.

In the first four months of operation, the market grossed about $500,000 and attracted 70,000 customers, Knoebel said.

Attracted by health concerns as well as environmental awareness, the shoppers range from white-haired ladies and men in three-piece suits to suburban moms and college students.

Co-op members make a one-time purchase of a $130 share in the market and in turn receive a 5% discount. In this co-op, members don’t have to contribute any labor--they leave that to the paid staff. The store is also open to non-members.

Emily Cramergates, a Montclair masseuse, has belonged to the co-op for more than five years.

“I like the concept, the fact that it belongs to the members,” Cramergates said. “I like anything that’s done by the people.”

The local student population has taken to the store, Knoebel said, as has the sizeable senior population in Claremont. Many of the retirees in town are former members of experimental Utopian communities of the 1930s and 1940s. “They were hard-core co-op people who came in and signed up immediately,” Knoebel said.

Strolling down the 4,500 square feet of food space at the market is an education.

If you’re looking for Pepsi, Twinkies or fried pork rinds, forget it. But you can find natural Tianfu China cola, Rice Dream ice cream substitute and garlic-herb risotto chips. Not to mention Cosmic Cabbage (a canned sauerkraut), “Biblical” honey, artichoke spaghetti and Piccadilly salt and vinegar potato chips.

The meat and poultry sold at Clyde Ruddock’s meat and deli counter inside the store is hormone-, steroid- and antibiotic-free. The laundry soap is non-polluting, and the coffee filters are unbleached and do not contain the chemical dioxin.

Cosmetics and health aids are “animal-cruelty free,” meaning they are not tested on animals and contain no animal byproducts.

And, of course, there is the organically grown produce. About 50% of the market’s produce falls under state guidelines for organics, meaning it was grown, packed and stored without the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides for a minimum of 12 months before planting or budding of tree crops.

When more locally grown organic fruits and vegetables are in season, the produce section will be as much as 70% organic, Knoebel said.

Though organic apples are not as uniformly large and shiny as the non-organic apples also sold at the store, Knoebel swears they taste better.

But in another nod to ‘90s pragmatism, the Yale Avenue board realized that consumers who frequent the market would want to find their favorite brands on the shelves along with natural products, Knoebel said.

If you look hard, you can find Haagen-Dazs ice cream, Heinz ketchup, Shredded Wheat and Progresso soup. But even the familiar brands are chosen with an eye toward the lowest chemical content available.

The natural-food industry has come of age, said Michael Ryan, a 36-year-old music professor at the University of La Verne who also works at Yale Avenue part time.

“There is increasing public awareness of the impact chemicals have on us from pesticides like malathion, food additives like Alar and environmental problems like global warming,” Ryan said.

But the awareness-- and the market have been a long time in the making.

Co-op president Vrenae Sutphin, 37, was an art history major at Scripps College 15 years ago when she joined the Claremont Community Cooperative, a food-buying club founded by a handful of people from Montclair Unitarian Church.

In those days, members purchased bulk-quantity staples and produce, and shared the goods to cut down on costs. The co-op operated out of a basement at Pitzer College for years, then moved to a warehouse and ended up in the garage of one of the early members, Sutphin said.

Incorporated in 1980, the cooperative grew until, by the mid-1980s, it was nearly a full-service store, concentrating on organics and natural-food products but staffed entirely by volunteers.

Sutphin, now a lawyer raising two young children in La Verne, rediscovered the co-op while on a hike with the Sierra Club.

“It was an elaborate setup, with coolers and shelves filling up a garage. It was getting out of hand,” she said.

In May, 1988, the members voted to turn the part-time co-op into a full-time store. They wanted to stay in Claremont because they felt the town, home to seven colleges, was ideal for a natural-food store, with most residents highly educated, concerned about health and able to afford higher prices for organic food.

“My primary concern is for my kids,” Sutphin said. “Our generation was the first to grow up eating stuff filled with poison, and who knows what it’s doing to us. I figure it’s too late for me, but I’m very careful about my kids’ diet.”