Goodbye Living Foods

I feel like a hypocrite saying it, but I’m blue about Living Foods packing it up. This month marks an end to the neighborhood health food store, founded near the Perkins Road overpass in 1980.

Like many people who frequented it, I found myself opting for Whole Foods or Target in recent years; their boundless options of better priced natural and organics were just too hard to pass up. From time to time, I still dropped by Living Foods for a signature avocado sandwich, and when I did, I was always greeted warmly by manager Nelly Manning or owner Soyla Nettles. Inevitably, I would overhear fellow customers asking which supplements to take for this calcium deficiency, or that rusty joint, questions that were always answered patiently and knowledgably.

Nelly is now working at Our Daily Bread, a larger locally-owned health food store on Florida Boulevard. Soyla admits to “mixed emotions,” but is braced for a new adventure. She and husband/co-owner, Rory Nettles, probably won’t let much grass grow under their feet. Years back, they actually sold Living Foods to finance a lifelong aspiration of living in the Caribbean. In those years, the place was run by owner Mark Courtman, who then sold it back to the Nettles when he wanted to finance his own wish of living in Hawaii. Living Foods, despite its tiny size and lackluster appearance, has been quite the little dream-maker.

It’s becoming harder to remember a time when finding “health food” required ordering it through the mail or shopping at specialty stores. Today’s culinary landscape, rich in natural, local and organic, represents significant progress for foodies and farmers. But it’s a phenomenon we wouldn’t see without the work of hippie outposts like Living Foods.