Healthy Way Market Just Keeps Growing

The “farm-to-fork” revolution of the last decade or so certainly took off at an opportune time for Adam Goettelman, owner of Sturgeon Bay’s prospering Healthy Way Market.

It vindicated his vision for a business that could be perceived as merely a niche seller of vitamins and supplements, not a full-blown grocery store in its own right — albeit with food and product lines entirely rooted in green origins, close-to-home suppliers and minimal processing. The organic movement helped Goettelman take what had already been a solid business when he bought it six years ago and thrive through not one, but two, relocations and expansions in just 5½ years. Oh, and a worldwide outbreak of COVID-19, too.

In 2016, Goettelman followed through on plans to move from the original storefront, a lopsided little, green-paneled building. The business moved across Sturgeon Bay’s picturesque bridges to a former florist/greenhouse on the edges of the South Third Avenue downtown. Then, early this year, strong customer support allowed him to triple his space by buying a long-empty former Super Valu grocery just one block south.

“We looked at (the current location) before our fi rst move, but it was just too big, honestly, too scary to think of,” Goettelman said. “I knew Sturgeon Bay wanted more than we had over there (on the opposite side of town), but not too much.

“The grocery industry is not for the faint of heart, it moves so quickly. And when you’re in the natural (foods) world with an emphasis on no-preservatives, it moves even faster to always have fresh product for everybody. We couldn’t afford to have too much space at first.”

Healthy Way traces its beginnings to local acupuncturist Al Stewart selling juices and smoothies out of that old, tiny bungalow. Fred and Dawn Wittig bought the store in 1996 and broadened the merchandise to vitamins, supplements and health foods, though just a mini-Me of what it would become.

Goettelman, an engineer by training and organic farmer in the southern part of the county, was one of the Wittigs’ produce suppliers. The opening for his change of careers came in early 2014 when both men experienced dramatic life upheavals — for Fred Wittig, the death of his wife; for Goettelman, the end of his marriage.

“I had talked about buying it previously as a retail outlet for our farm,” Goettelman said. “So one day in February, I stopped in just to shoot the breeze and see how he’s doing. And Fred says, ‘Oh, my gosh, I was just thinking about you (and the purchase offer).’ Fred was struggling, the store was struggling. He was that close to just locking the doors and (the town) losing the store for good.”

Goettelman asked to work there for a week before giving a fi nal answer on buying. Two months later, he owned it. “Before I even took over, I wanted to get out of that (tiny) building,” he said. “Starting from scratch with my own store might have been easier. But those two families had worked so hard to keep it going. I almost felt obligated to save the brand.”

“Whether you come here to lead a healthy lifestyle, or you’re looking to improve that lifestyle, or just supporting the (buy) local economics, we fit a lot of small niche markets that together create a bigger market.”
— Adam Goettelman,owner, Healthy Way Market

Goettelman certainly welcomes any store traffi c derived from Door County’s huge summer population. But he said he’s proud to “cater to the locals,” targeting his advertising messages toward his neighbors and never trimming hours in the winter like many other Peninsula shops.

Although obesity and chronic disease tied to diet remain alarmingly high in America, Goettelman’s wider industry capitalized on the growing pockets of people who went the opposite direction and take an almost religious zeal to healthy eating and clean living. Case in point: The average high school football player today tends to take as good — or better — care of his body year-round than the average NFL player did in the offseason 50 years ago.

Goettelman most defi nitely trades in specialty retail. Just two names pop up in an online search for Door County health food stores, the other being Greens ‘N Grains in Egg Harbor.

But Goettelman attributes his growth to the fact that his discerning customers are not all alike in terms of what they’re particular about. More and more — and here come the kudos to the related know-your-farmer trend — he can appeal to a greater variety of customer tastes, making for a bigger slice of (organic) pie.

“That word ‘healthy’ is very inclusionary,” Goettelman said. “I came at it from an environmental health standpoint, a ‘healthy soils means healthy people’ outlook. But (it could also mean) if you’re a weightlifter or a supplement (user) or hardcore into the paleo lifestyle or vegetarian or gluten-free or any of those defi nitions.

“We know we’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but we’re not looking for that. Whether you come here to lead a healthy lifestyle, or you’re looking to improve that lifestyle, or just supporting the (buy) local economics, we fi t a lot of small niche markets that together create a bigger market.”

That business model is why Goettelman took a place originally named The Healthy Way and changed it to Healthy Way Market. He wanted the public to know his is more than a vitamin shop, the shelves stocked with the same items as any other grocery in town. Except, of course, that organic products created by sustainable methods are the entire lock, stock and barrel, not just a separate department tucked in a far corner.

“The (old) name equated us to vegans,” Goettelman said. “It wasn’t mainstream, it pigeonholes us. Like, people wonder if we have meat. We have a great meat selection! I work with two of the great meat farms in this area, Sunset (Farm) in Brussels and Waseda Farms in Baileys Harbor.

“Now, we’re not always the cheapest on the corner on a lot of our products. Do we have $2.50 (per pound) ground beef? No. The farmer (suppliers) has to make a living and don’t get the big subsidies or economies of scale that the big feedlots get. Our customers prefer quality over quantity. To each their own.”

Goettelman took a store with “two, maybe four” freezer/cooler doors at the original spot and now counts about 30. The contents could satisfy any shopping list: whole milk including from a familiar Wisconsin name, Lamers Dairy; cheeses, yogurt, pork, salami and more of the same.

The expanded produce area at Healthy Way's new store. Photo by Leslie Gast.

On the shelves within the newly wider aisles, there’s a similar horn-of-plenty worth of merchandise — from onions, bananas, potatoes and other produce; to craft beer and wine from organic grapes; to pancake and waffl e mixes, whole-wheat spaghetti, shampoo, cold medicine, cat food, caffeinated cold teas and coffees, and the list goes on.

Goettelman also added a kitchen at the previous location that has more elbow room in the new building. The food preps, led by Goettelman’s ex-wife Meg Farley, do not make custom orders but rather pre-packaged, “grab-and-go” items for a nutritious cold deli such as pizzas, cookies and brownies; tuna and potato salads; and taco, chicken or quinoa wraps.

“(The kitchen) started out in just a tiny room in our last building, and it just took off,” Goettelman said. “I just tortured those poor ladies over there (with the lack of space).”

He has further big growth plans in mind, more in terms of services than space. Those include classes in healthful cooking; a homesteading section selling potting soil, home-canning supplies and organic pest control and seeds (the latter of which is among the current inventory but not a department of its own); a greenhouse furnishing starter vegetable transplants; and tearing up part of the parking lot to cultivate colorful, bounteous gardens with interior seating for demonstrations.

“The thinking there is that when a kid sees a potato come out of the ground for the fi rst time, it just blows their mind,” Goettelman said — while also nurturing a new generation of gardeners and people closely connected to the soil.

There is just one catch before those dreams can come true: the out-ofthe- blue, rude interruption of the new strain of coronavirus. 

“COVID, man, it just really wrecked so many of my fun ideas,” Goettelman said. “Things got really weird for me all of a sudden, and just three months after we moved in. All of those ideas and hopes are still out there, though.”

Like many a merchant, he shor tened hours and shifted gears to curbside pickup of product. Healthy Way also delivered eats through an emergency meals-on-wheels type program organized by Door County’s fire chiefs. Regular hours have resumed — 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 9 to 5 Sunday — and the pandemic, while delaying some aspirations, has also accelerated Goettelman’s desire to get “a real online store” going.

As a food and health products store, Healthy Way made it onto the “essential” list and never closed. But only five shoppers were allowed through the doors at a time, and “every cart, every basket, every checkout aisle was sanitized after every transaction,” said Goettelman, who despite a loosening of restrictions maintains healthy distancing, masking and product handling practices.

He said his customers were “pretty respectful” right from the start of the outbreak but that keeping a safe physical distance is tough because groceries are a “community hub.”

“You run into your neighbor ‘Flo’ and you want to catch up,” Goettelman said. “Our customers are no different. They generally share a similar lifestyle and community (interest), so many have become friends. And then suddenly you’ve got three or four people in a conversation.”

If a widely predicted second wave of COVID-19 strikes, most likely in autumn or winter, Goettelman said he will be “prepared for staff safety and community safety” by having been through the wringer once already.

“Some (plans) might now be two or three years down the road, and we’ll focus on what should or can we do immediately in the short-term?” Goettelman said. “When can we safely put 20 people in a room -- and not just when the state or CDC tells us we can, but when we feel comfortable doing it.

“Who knows, maybe virtual classes? Anything’s possible. I’m definitely a dreamer, and I’m not going to let this COVID thing slow me down. People still need food and things to do.”