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The black and white picture above is of me, Stephen Trinkaus. The photo on the right is of the exterior of our original location on State Street – pictured are (from left to right): James Loucky (a former professor of mine from WWU); my wife Jillian, my son Cody, and me (from 2003).
This is where you can read the story of the business, who we are, and why we do what we do. To tell the story, I have to tell my story – at least as it relates to how the business got started and why I’ve decided to run the stores the way I do. I think you will find it interesting. It’s a bit long, but well worth the time. So, here it goes!
CHAPTER ONE
FROM JUNK FOOD TO ORGANIC FOOD
My name is Stephen Trinkaus. I am 45 years old and I am the owner and General Manager of Terra Organica, Bargainica, and the Bellingham Public Market, a husband, a father, and the son of the greatest mom in the history of the universe.
If you could travel back in time say, oh, to the early 1990’s to seek me out, you would never guess that the guy you would meet would some day own an organic grocery store. No way. In 1991 I was attending WWU and finishing up my degree in Latin American Studies. My goal was to go to grad school at the University of Texas in Austin, then work in international trade with southern cone countries (Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay). I was fluent in Spanish and had spent a couple years living in and traveling through Latin America. I also survived on the Standard American Diet (or SAD) – lots of processed food that contained lots of the “bad stuff” and generally not enough of the “good stuff.” To put myself through college, I worked for Domino’s pizza and often survived on the over-cooked pies and cancelled orders that we could take home.
During the summer I worked at Bellingham Frozen Foods, a business that used to be on Bellingham’s waterfront and processed frozen vegetables from local farms. Because I was fluent in Spanish, I was often called on to translate for the many Mexican workers who also worked there.
In 1991, the great migrant farm worker organizer and union leader Cesar Chavez spoke at WWU. I would say that his visit was a turning point in my life. Why? Through the efforts of the local groups who were in solidarity with his cause I learned about not only the social injustices suffered by migrant workers, but also about the high incidence of birth defects, certain cancers, and other degenerative diseases in the migrant population due to their exposure to synthetic agricultural chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc.). When I thought about what I didn’t know about the lives of the migrant workers I had befriended, it was literally enough to commit to an all-organic diet – a drastic change!
As many have found, when one begins to question the dominant assumptions of society, life can change on many fronts. My desire to work in international business was supplanted with the goal of working in organic agriculture. My comfortable rental in the York neighborhood was soon forfeited to live off the grid in a converted school bus. I began to grow my own food and live closer to the land in every way.
I eventually ended up working for Omega Nutrition, a local company best known for pressing organic flax seed oil.
CHAPTER TWO
A VERY QUICK HISTORY OF THE ORGANIC MOVEMENT
This is a very quick history to make a few points for this article. If you want a more comprehensive history, click here.
One of the main trends that lead to the early growth of organic agriculture was the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960’s and 70’s. At the risk of oversimplification, this movement was predominantly made up of counter-culture youth who had little or no experience with farming, let alone running businesses. Over time, through trial and error, dogged persistence, and dumb luck, many would go on to be successful farmers and establish businesses that added value to these organic crops.
Organic food began to go mainstream in 1989 following a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council that was publicized by the CBS news program 60 Minutes. The report found a link between Alar (a synthetic plant growth regulator commonly used on apple trees) and cancer. The Alar controversy would end up taking on a life of its own, but to the organic movement it became a watershed moment as more and more people began to question the consequences of consuming industrial chemicals with their food.
The massive increase in demand for organic food meant that those who were in the organic “industry” found their businesses growing exponentially, and many with capital and entrepreneurial inclinations jumped on the bandwagon. For a movement dominated by people steeped in the counterculture movement of the 60’s and 70’s, this lead to some interesting consequences and soul-searching. Could you grow big and maintain the integrity of organics? And what happens to your life when your business is suddenly growing faster than you ever expected it could?
CHAPTER THREE
PASSION, BUSINESS, AND “SUCCESS”
People who start businesses usually do so for passion for the product or service they will offer, because of the profit potential, or both. The people who pioneered the organic movement were definitely in the passion category. However, one aspect of being in business is that when the business grows, the person or people who started it end up doing very different jobs than the ones they did when they started the business. For better or for worse, I have found this to be true in my business as well. I now spend a lot of time dealing with finance, marketing, strategic planning, managing the managers, and such, rather than the things I used to do such as working with farmers and talking to customers.
When I worked for Omega Nutrition, the president and co-owner Bob Walberg was in a similar predicament. It did, however, work in my favor as he took me under his wing and I got to do many fun and inspiring things. I attended farming conferences, industry trade shows and partook in nutritional workshops. I met and worked with many pioneers in the organic field.
The result of this is that my eyes were opened wide to the realities of the industry. I realized that the organic values were being corrupted by greed for money and market share. Small companies were being gobbled up by large corporations that had little interest in planetary or human health. At the retail level, slick marketing and nutritional double-speak were becoming the norm. I had been under the assumption that health food stores sold healthy food – silly me!
My solution? I would open up my own store and we would do the research for the customers. Our customers would not find out after shopping in a natural foods store for five years that they were being deceived. Nope, this would be a back-to-the-roots endeavor with integrity, where people and planet would always come before profits.
CHAPTER FOUR
A STORE IS BORN
In 1996 Omega Nutrition burned to the ground in a devastating fire; luckily, nobody was hurt. During the chaos that followed, I lost my job there and decided to follow my crazy dream – opening an all-organic grocery store! Whatever we sold would be researched for purity and the manufacturer’s ethical standards. After living in a school bus off the grid all those years and working my butt off, I not only had paid off my student loans but had an actual savings account. With those savings, investment capital from friends and family, and a few credit cards, I opened Terra Organica in a former auto parts store on State Street on March 21, 1997.
And we were small - only 800 square feet. Our “display” freezers were upright home units purchased from Sears and the back-stock for the entire store was kept in the closet of a neighboring business.
To make a long story short, our business boomed. In the business world, 15% annual growth is considered extremely strong. For our first decade in business, our business grew at an average annual rate of 55%. Needless to say, we had to constantly expand our space and eventually grew into what had been five individual spaces in our building (about 3,000 square feet).
CHAPTER FIVE
LEARNING CURVES
Our long time customers may remember (in order) the Bellingham Empowerment Center (group effort), the Terra Organica Community Room (mine), Café Organica (group effort), The Naked Café (independent), The Red Café (independent), The Blackbird World Kitchen & Bakery (independent), and The Café at Terra Organica (mine). All of these occupied a neighboring space, and they all lost money. Lots of it. In fact, by the time The Café at Terra Organica closed, I was talking to an attorney - my side businesses were about to bring down the store and my family into bankruptcy. “There’s no other way to dig yourself out,” the attorney advised me. So bankruptcy it was. Not because I didn’t run a good store (Terra Organica was doing fine), but for not listening when others said, “Don’t do it – the store is more than enough for a mere mortal such as yourself.”
Then one morning I woke up and realized that bankruptcy was not the way I wanted to go out – I would go down kicking and screaming if need be – but not before the landlord kicked us out and our suppliers cut us off.
That’s when my friend Shane Hart said, “Stephen, you oughtta start that discount store you’ve been talking about in that space next door.” I decided to tempt my mortality once again.
And so Bargainica was born in the former café space, and six months later we were showing a profit and our financial standing was solid.
CHAPTER SIX
FACING DEMONS
Bargainica was founded with a very different philosophy from Terra – if it’s a deal and it’s organic or natural” then we’ll sell it. Hmmm. Whatever happened to all those ideals about standards and ethics? “Natural” has no legal definition and usually refers to products that contain no “artificial” ingredients. However, if you could see a list of the food additives that are considered “natural” you may not think you are being leveled with. And you’re not.
Bargainica is a bridge between conventional and organic fare. It’s also affordable for people with budget constraints. Hopefully someday everyone will prioritize organic food as a necessity and have the income to support it. We’re not there yet, and Bargainica is the stepping stone. And, we still have tough ingredient standards, not just as tough as Terra Organica’s. It is a compromise, but one I feel very proud of. Bargainica has developed its own personality, its own following. and its own place in the struggle for wholeness and sustainability. LONG LIVE BARGAINICA!
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE BELLINGHAM PUBLIC
MARKET IS (RE)BORN
Once everything was on solid ground again, our business was bursting at the seams. Our small space was no longer serving our needs. I began to look for a new larger location.
Since I was committed to remaining downtown, the choices were limited. After analyzing the possibilities, I came to the conclusion that the best location would be the old Safeway building on the corner of Cornwall and York. Two problems though: the whole building was occupied, and as great at it was, it would still be too big. However, I couldn’t resist the ideal location, the large parking lot, and a building that would already have the infrastructure for a grocery store. Unwilling to give up, I literally went to one of the existing tenants (Crazy Prices) and asked if they would consider sharing the space (they didn’t use a lot of it) or if they were considering moving anytime soon. It turned out that I was an answer to their prayers because they had actually been considering both possibilities. And, to make a long story short, they ended up moving to Mount Vernon where they combined with another business and became Stupid Prices (really, I wouldn’t make that up).
That solved one problem. The other was the size – at 14,200 square feet, it was way bigger than I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be that big because (1) in order to fill the space we would have had to carry products that didn’t meet our standards, and (2) staffing a store that size would have resulted in having so many employees that we would no longer be the tight community we had always been (which is one of the reasons I absolutely love coming to work every day). I thought about this and came up with the idea of a marketplace – we could occupy half the space, and we could find tenants to occupy the rest. We could share infrastructure (utilities, janitorial services, marketing, etc.) and create a nice little community.
Great idea – but there was no way I could take that one on by myself. I was already working 50 to 60 hours per week, I had an infant at home, a marriage commitment, and I was missing doing the things I used to do before I started the business. That’s when I asked one of our part-time employees to become my business partner. And that’s how Gary Holloway became the other half owner of the market, as well as the project manager during the construction and leasing phase, and the Market Manager once it was open.
Still, we had to come up with a name for the endeavor. We didn’t think of “Bellingham Public Market” for quite some time. Some earlier versions were “Bellingham Festival Marketplace” and (believe it or not) “Land Ho!” (that was my idea). Once we came up with the name, we began researching and visiting other public markets and realized that we were actually joining a worldwide community of public markets.
Another interesting thing we found out was that we were not the first Bellingham Public Market. The original one opened in 1916 on the northeast corner of Magnolia and Cornwall (currently the location of Rite-Aid) and housed over twenty merchants offering a wide range of products including fresh produce, flowers, seafood, crafts and other local commodities. The popularity of this concept caught on and two new markets, Peoples Market and Home Market, opened their doors just a few years later.
The Great Depression and the subsequent advent of cheap transportation and cold storage brought about the demise of these central markets and their counterparts across the country. In recent decades, with many cities focusing on urban renewal as an alternative to sprawl, there has been a renaissance in the public market concept. Some are publicly owned, some privately, some are much larger than ours, some much smaller – but all have the same idea of creating a community space around local independent businesses.
As for our market, a local “angel” investor stepped forward to finance the project, and the Bellingham Public Market was on its way to becoming a reality. Planning and construction took about one year, and Gary was able to lease most of the space before we even opened. Although some of the businesses have closed (Café Ohya, Curious Crow Espresso, Collections Gifts), others have moved to new locations (Chocolate Necessities, Wild Blueberries), and some have done both (Fair Trade Crafts, Pescaderia Seafood), the market has remained vibrant and full since it opened in May 2005. A current listing of market vendors may be found on this page.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE SECOND BARGAINICA LOCATION
As we planned and prepared for the big move, I felt a sense of loss about moving from our old location. We had become the neighborhood store for many people who lived and worked in the area, a regular stop for people heading to the south side, and a destination for many.
Since I had been toying for some time about opening a stand-alone Bargainica location, the first consideration was to reopen the old store as a Bargainica store. Then I found out that a building that was just down the street from us had been purchased and was due for a first-class remodel. A prime location with ample parking and updated wiring, plumbing and everything else was too good to pass up – especially with the opportunity to secure the end space by the parking lot.
The decision was not hard to make – Bargainica would have a second location.
CHAPTER NINE
AND IT WORKED
They were good moves. They were stressful, expensive, over-budget, debt-inducing moves, but they were worth it. Our gross sales grew 81% the first year, and 85% the second. As of May 2008, there were about 750 people per day making purchases in our stores, up from about 200 customers per day prior to the move and expansion.
How did the competition affected us? Prior to Trader Joe’s opening, we had only ever had one real competitor – the Community Food Co-op. “Competitor” is used loosely here because we had always been more collaborative than competitive. (Not a day goes by without us sending customers to one-another’s store, and not a month goes by without us sharing some sort of information to help us both succeed. Only in Bellingham!) When Trader Joe’s opened in late September 2007, we had our first test, and we did spectacularly. The average natural foods retailer loses 10% to 20% of their business when a Trader Joe’s moves into their core area. At our Public Market location, we were down about 4% for one month, then bounced back to have record sales during the following months. At our State Street location, we were down about 15% for three months, then rebounded to average sales thereafter. Then in early 2009 the Community Food Co-op opened its second location in the north part of town and we took another hit to our business, but once again we rebounded to match our previous level of sales.
CHAPTER TEN
BIG BUMPS
The biggest challenge since the move came not from competition, but from the economy itself. As food, raw material and oil prices saw record price increases, and economic turmoil consumed world markets throughout 2008, we saw our first ever period of negative growth. After eleven years of boom, we experienced our first bust - nothing terribly dramatic, but enough to cause us to question the operation of two stores. After much deliberation, we decided that it would be in the best interest of the continued viability of our business to close the State Street location.
Although the closure meant we could focus more energy on the Public Market location, it also meant that five full time positions would be eliminated and a neighborhood we had served since our inception would no longer have a food store.
In closing out the chapter on the State Street location, I feel I must give an appreciation for the support of so many people in that neighborhood. You (and you know who you are) made our initial success possible, and thus launched us into becoming the successful grocery store that we are today. We literally could not have done it without you. Thank you.
In early 2010 my business partner in the Public Market (Gary) decided to move on and move back to New Jersey to undertake the job of Market Manager of a new Public Market there. As a result, Terra Organica, Inc. took over the management of the Bellingham Public Market and I assumed Gary’s previous position as Market Manager.
The lagging economy has continued to be a drag on Terra Organica and all the businesses in the Public Market, but we have continued to chug forward, keep the Public Market a great place to run a business, shop, eat, meet friends, or just hang out. And I give thanks that in these uncertain times that our focus is primarily on two things we all need – good food and a resilient community.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE FUTURE
Economic turmoil, as disruptive as it can be, may be the least of our current challenges. Our society faces some huge issues that threaten our very survival: war, peak oil, climate change, a widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the general disregard for the effect of our lifestyle on the biosphere. These are real and devastating issues, and it constantly amazes me that there is still so much denial amongst the very people whose lives will be most affected.
That said, I am an eternal optimist. I intentionally brought a child into this imperfect world because I think we are more resilient, creative and thoughtful than we give our collective selves credit for. The possibility of a better world for the future generations is within our grasp. It will be a different world indeed, and it will likely be birthed by even more pain and suffering. But it is ours - if we want it to be.
I started this business because I realized that I could not remove myself from “the system” and still satisfy my personal need to feel like I am making a difference. Terra Organica, Bargainica, and the Bellingham Public Market are baby steps to a more compassionate world – and they are far from perfect. As much as I hope that you will shop here and support these endeavors, my dream is that someday the grocery store model will be irrelevant. One day our food will not be so processed, so packaged, and come from so far away. Children will no longer think that food “comes from” supermarkets because it will come from the people who grow it, raise it, fish it, hunt it, bake it, and otherwise create it. It won’t be paid for by bank cards, and nor will the costs to produce it be externalized in the environment and our health bills.
If that world comes in my lifetime, you may find me back off the grid living in a converted school bus. Until then, or until the day I retire, you will find me here – doing my best to fill your shopping cart with the most nourishing foods I can convince you to buy.
Thank you for reading my story.
Sincerely,
Stephen Trinkaus
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