Lisa Norwood is into eating healthy, and she wants to spread the word.
Her passion for food free of chemicals and preservatives led her to open The Whole Foods Store, located at 911 Walnut St.
Norwood, 45, is a native of Jackson and former longtime resident of Gulf Shores, Ala. She said her husband, Bobby Norwood, a Leflore County fire investigator, had to learn about organic foods once they married.
“He already knew the way I cooked and the way that I eat was different than what he was accustomed to,” she said. “He had no problems jumping in and eating the same way, but he told me there was no place to buy food like that here.”
A few years back, Norwood fell back into the pattern of eating more processed foods purchased at grocery stores.
Then, she started feeling the effects. “I started feeling bad, gaining weight and all these things,” she said. “I said, ‘Wait a minute. This is not working for me.’”
She went online, found the Rainbow Whole Foods Cooperative Grocery in Jackson and started eating organic once again. Traveling to Jackson every week or so in search of healthy foods got her to thinking there might be a market for such foods in Greenwood.
“We kind of just put everything on the line,” she said.
Norwood, who has a background in retail and resort management, has never run a grocery store before. She currently works part-time as a billing specialist for Dr. Rick Murphree in Greenwood.
Since for now it’s a part-time job, The Whole Foods Store is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Norwood said she’s available if someone needs organic items when the store isn’t open. Customers can reach her by e-mail at
thewholefoodsstore@yahoo
.com or by cell phone at (215) 609-0336. The store’s direct number is 219-2009.
“I’ll do everything I can,” Norwood said.
She said it’s been a challenge getting the store going. She and her husband have traveled to Dallas and Atlanta to pick up inventory and occasionally have met a delivery truck in Jackson.
Greenwood definitely has a market for organic food, she said. “The community, in my opinion, needs it so much,” she said. “There are already people who live this way and want the opportunity to be able to walk down the street and say, ‘Oh, shoot, I’m out of bottling butter. I’ll ride down and go pick some up instead of waiting ’til next Saturday when I’m in Jackson.’”
Norwood said she has already developed a small base of regular customers. The store has a customer loyalty program in which people can earn points for their purchases and redeem the points for products later.
Her next goal is helping to educate the community of the benefits of organic foods.
Seven or eight years ago, she believed she ate healthy. Then she had a stomach ulcer, which required an emergency room visit.
Later, a chiropractor in Gulf Shores helped Norwood identify the causes of her declining health. She believes these include beef that was full of hormones and antibiotics or raised on a feed lot and vegetables sprayed with pesticides and herbicides. The same goes for items made from genetically modified organisms, which often aren’t labeled as such.
Because of the delay between cause and effect, people often don’t associate the food they eat with feeling run-down, Norwood said.
Norwood said, once the store begins thriving, she’d like to educate the community on eating healthy. The store features a small reference library on this subject, and she’s contemplating offering “Movie Nights” to spread knowledge about organic foods.
She said she initially hesitated to call the business The Whole Foods Store because of the name’s similarity to Whole Foods Market, a giant organic store chain.
However, she decided that in this area, “if people were looking for whole foods, they wouldn’t know ‘Gigi’s’ or ‘Lisa’s,’ so that’s kind of how it happened.”
Norwood and her husband have a son, Randy Stallworth, 14, a freshman at J.Z. George High School.
• Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
