THE WASHINGTON POST • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2010
18 DC
District
L OCAL LIVING community news
Organic grocery creates its own market share
“I think people here deserve by Timothy Wilson
Gary Cha would lie awake at night worrying whether his health food stores would survive the arrival of a big new challenger. When Fresh Fields opened a
37,000-square-foot organic shopping smorgasbord for D.C. residents in December 2000, almost immediately sales at his Yes! Organic Markets plummeted by nearly 60 percent. “It was really tough for us,”
said Cha, who bought his first store at 1825 Columbia Rd. NW in 1983 and opened two more by 1999. “We barely survived.” Instead of going out of business, Cha found a way to keep the doors open and sleep better at night. His plan was simple: expand to areas where large retailers wouldn’t go and listen to customer input on which products to stock. So far, his strategy appears to be working. This month, Cha opened his seventh Yes! Organic Market, at 2321 Pennsylvania Ave. SE in the Fairlawn neighborhood. It’s the second supermarket to open in Ward 8 since 2007.
better,” Cha said. “We want to be a part of the community.” Although the market is new to the neighborhood, Cha said, some customers were familiar with the store. Since the opening, he “saw a lot of familiar faces” that once shopped at the Capitol Hill location, he said. Learning where his customers lived gave Cha an advantage on choosing where to open a new location. While looking for a location for his third store, he quickly discovered that many customers were coming from the Brookland neighborhood in Northeast. Cha said he drove around the neighborhood and found a suitable building — a former Safeway grocery store. The store closed in 1982 and was converted in to a senior day-care facility. The 8,000-square-foot Brookland store opened in fall 2006, Cha said. It had a loading dock and enough space to store products for all three locations, giving him more buying power with wholesalers. “They saw that we could potentially be a big buyer,” he said. Real estate developers also took notice. They began to
PHOTOS BY JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST Tiffany Gross helps customers Daryl Johnson, center, and Sharon Jackson at the new Fairlawn store.
partner with Cha to occupy the retail space of mixed-use projects that featured affordable housing units. Those partnerships led to markets opening on 14th Street NW in 2008 and Georgia Avenue NW in 2009.
Although Yes! Organic Market
typically has less inventory than larger grocery stores, Cha said, customers have a great influence
Gary Cha opened the first Yes! Organic Market in 1983.
on what products are stocked. That allows him to move quickly on their suggestions, an advantage that makes it difficult for larger stores to compete, Cha said.
“If we’re playing their game,
we’ll lose,” he said. “You want to do something else that they don’t do well.”
wilsontj@washpost.com IN BRIEF
Habitat, city agency to build solar homes in Deanwood
Habitat for Humanity and the D.C.
Department of Housing and Community Development will open two solar-panel houses in Ward 7’s Deanwood neighborhood next fall. One house will be built and
exhibited at the 2011 Solar Decathlon competition on the Mall in October 2011. It will then be moved to Deanwood, where the other Habitat house will be built. Both
houses are will consume 90 percent less energy for heating and cooling than a typical house.
Construction is scheduled to begin in the spring. Habitat for Humanity will select a family for the houses this fall. To apply or to volunteer for the construction, go to www.
dchabitat.org.
Renovated Georgetown library will open Oct. 18
Services at the renovated Georgetown Neighborhood Library,
3260 R St. NW, will resume Oct. 18. The Georgetown Interim Library, 3307 M St. NW, will close Saturday. The renovated three-story library will include dedicated space for teenagers, improved access for people with disabilities, a reading terrace, a new children’s room and restored woodwork throughout the building. A new third floor for the Peabody Room will house a special collection of materials on Georgetown history. For information, go to www.
dclibrary.org.
College scholarships for homeless, at-risk students A national scholarship program is
teaming with an organization that helps fight homelessness to offer college scholarships to homeless and at-risk youths. The Horatio Alger Association and
Give US Your Poor plan to award almost 1,000 college scholarships to high schools students in every state. For information or to apply, go to
www.horatioalger.org/scholarships.
Girl, 10, wins Arthur Ashe tennis essay contest
Paige Moore, 10, of the District is one of 10 winners in the 12th annual USTA/NJTL Arthur Ashe Essay Contest. The winners, ages 10 to 18, are
participants in the National Junior Tennis and Learning network. They wrote essays on Ashe’s 1968 U.S. Open victory. — Compiled by Terence McArdle
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