HISTORY OF EREWHON - NATURAL FOODS ... - SoyInfo Center

(eventually thousands) of others started new natural foods
stores – which (for the first 10-15 years) sold many foods
unpackaged in bulk, would not sell meat, refined foods, or
foods containing sugar or chemical additives, pills, alcohol,
or tobacco.
From the beginning, the influence of macrobiotics, and
of macrobiotic teachers such as Michio and Aveline Kushi
(in Boston), Herman and Cornellia Aihara (in Chico,
California), and George and Lima Ohsawa (world travelers
from Japan) was strong. They imported, introduced, and
helped to popularize a host of foods from Japan – foods that
most Americans had never heard of or tasted – such as
brown rice, tamari soy sauce, miso, seitan, rice cakes,
sesame seeds, sesame salt (gomashio), azuki beans, soba
(buckwheat noodles), amazake, sea vegetables (hijiki,
wakame, konbu/kombu, nori, etc.), umeboshi (salt plums),
kuzu, udon (special wheat noodles), kabocha pumpkins,
burdock root, bancha twig tea, and mu tea.
Chico-San (Chico, California), acting on the initiative
and teaching of George Ohsawa, pioneered the production
of organically grown brown rice in the United States. In
1968 Bob Kennedy, president of Chico-San (a macrobiotic
company), signed a 5-year exclusive contract with the
Lundberg brothers of Wehah Farms (in Richvale, California,
near Chico). In 1969 the Lundbergs planted 78 acres of
organic short-grain brown rice; it became available to
Chico-San in late 1979 and they had no trouble distributing
it all. The acreage increased each year, but in early Aug.
1972 a fire burned Chico-San to the ground. Since they
were now unable to distribute the rice, the exclusive
contract was rendered null and void. Erewhon, which in
1971 had found its own source of brown rice in Arkansas,
then agreed to take as much brown rice as the Lundbergs
could provide, starting with that year’s harvest (late 1972).
After their plant was rebuilt, Chico-San focused on
manufacturing rice cakes – made by heating brown rice in a
round mold until it puffed.
Chico-San and Erewhon were the first companies to sell
many of the macrobiotic natural foods imported from Japan,
and many of these foods (including soyfoods such as natural
soy sauce/tamari and miso) gradually made their way into
the American diet and language. Chico-San was primarily a
foods manufacturer and importer; it sold most of its foods
through old-line health food distributors. Erewhon, by
contrast, was primarily a distributor.
Macrobiotics taught that whole grains should be the
center of the diet – something many Americans had once
believed but had long forgotten. Substances unfit for normal
human consumption were white sugar, alcohol, dairy
products, and all kinds of drugs.
Important early periodicals were East West Journal (Jan.
1971, Boston, macrobiotic), Vegetarian Times (March 1974,
Chicago), Health Foods Business (1973), Whole Foods
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HISTORY OF EREWHON 10
(Jan. 1978, Berkeley), and Natural Foods Merchandiser
(Feb. 1979).
Erewhon (Boston) was the first real distributor of just
natural foods (fall 1969). Other early distributors were:
Westbrae (July 1970, Berkeley, California), Erewhon West
(summer 1970, Los Angeles), Essene (Feb. 1971,
Philadelphia), Laurelbrook (1971, Maryland), Eden Foods
(June 1971, Ann Arbor, Michigan), Shadowfax (1971, New
York), The Well (1971, San Jose, California), Janus (Jan.
1972, Seattle, Washington), Tree of Life (1972, St.
Augustine, Florida).
Pioneers and leaders included the founders and heads of
the major distributing companies and periodicals, and Fred
Rohe, plus new natural food retailers Sandy Gooch (Mrs.
Gooch’s), Anthony Harnett (Bread and Circus; he had
previously worked for Erewhon), Peter Roy and John
Mackey (Whole Foods).
During the second natural foods movement, the organic
movement which had started in the early 1940s, blossomed.
An increasing number of small farmers were saved from
extinction by the growing market for organics. More and
more growers and consumers realized that organics is about
the health and fertility of the soil and its ability to produce
healthy plants that don’t need chemicals to resist pests,
weeds, and disease. Although usually thought of as a
“chemical-free” claim (and organic producers would
certainly hope to be), organically grown and processed is
really a broader claim about growing and processing, and
what is or isn’t relied on in production.
By the mid- to late-1970s, most of the health food
distributors mentioned above were carrying a complete line
of natural foods and distributing them to both health food
stores and natural food stores.
Surprisingly, the natural foods industry has never
developed its own trade association. Therefore the company
that owns Natural Foods Merchandiser has used this
opportunity to organize very successful trade shows at
Anaheim, California, and Washington, DC each year, and to
publish the industry’s most important periodical.
In those heady days of the late 1960s and early 1970s it
looked like America was headed into a peaceful, nonviolent
revolution. Young people, the revolutionaries (“Power to the
people!” “Don’t trust anybody over 30”) would be in the
vanguard. They needed to develop new models for the
rapidly approaching future. The Erewhon retail store at 342
Newbury Street that opened in Nov. 1968 was developed as
a model new food store. Wooden walls, food in bins, only
healthy natural foods. Fred Rohe’s New Age Natural Foods
in San Francisco was an early West Coast model retail store.
Erewhon was developed as a model wholesale
distributor of the new foods. Many other new and
successful companies modeled themselves after Erewhon.