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 Granary Health Foods
with
John and Carol Powell

THREE miles outside Dylan Thomas's "ugly lovely town" of Abertawe (Swansea), idyllically set with a castle at its crown and the sea at its feet, lies the sleepy, age-old fishing town of Mumbles.

It has no doubt grown in size since its oyster industry days, but has managed to retain the charming village atmosphere and is still known affectionately as "the village" by those living there and close by.

The large number of small independent stores further enhances the village atmosphere. Mumbles is a close, friendly community, where people prefer the intimacy of the grocer, the baker and indeed the local health food store to the rather impersonal supermarkets.

The prevailing village atmosphere has also been incorporated into The Granary Food Store, with its nostalgic, mock-Victorian shop-front and the congenial, relaxed service offered inside. Staring out defiantly from the bottom of Castleton Arcade, it looks like becoming as permanent as the castle a few hundred feet above it.

Keeping it in the family

In fact, one of the Powells daughters, Cathryn, is a vegetarian and the other, Elizabeth, is a vegan.

Cathryn, 21, is married and she, husband Jonathan and three-year-old daughter Charlotte are all vegetarians. She helps her parents in the shop once a week and is very interested in natural remedies, hoping to do a homoeopathic course in the near future.

However, Daisy, the Powells' golden Labrador is not a vegetarian. "I believe dogs are meant to eat meat," says John. Nevertheless, Daisy was brought up on Denes natural dog foods.

Carol continued to cook healthily using wholefoods and John, who had previously suf-fered from stomach trouble, began to notice how much better and more energetic he was starting to feel. He did not even notice when he had not eaten meat for a fortnight. He is now just as committed to a low-cholesterol, high-fibre, sugar-free diet as Carol is.

Carol also suffered from migraines which disappeared after a naturopath discovered she was allergic to butter, citrus fruit and coffee.

Carol has done an NAHS certificate and is currently doing a health diploma by correspondence with a London nutrition centre. She is very interested in and knowledgeable about healthy diets, and very often draws on her own experience to advise customers. "I can see a milk allergy coming through the door at 50 paces," says Carol.

She also freely recommends practitioners but only ones who have treated her personally.

At the same time that Carol was looking for a health food shop, John was looking to start up his own butcher business. They viewed nearly a dozen premises with the health food shop in mind, most of which were in secondary trading positions and would have needed a dozen staff -not ideal. The ones which did appeal meant that someone would have to be there full-time, but Carol only wanted to work part-time. So in the end, it seemed a natural decision to forget about the butcher shop and just to open up the health food store with John as full-time manager.

When they first viewed the prospective "premises" for the Granary Health Food Store, it was just a building site as the Arcade was in the middle of construction.

When they opened in October 1983 on a Tuesday, their target was to take £400 for that week. They took £750, so from day one they were off to a good start.

 "It was one of the luckiest things to happen to us. The reception was incredible," remembers John.

A fortnight after opening, John advertised in a local paper, but he only advertised "Honey at 59p". This did prove very successful. However on this point John and Carol do differ, Carol being a firm believer in reputation by word of mouth. And, indeed, Carol may well be right, for they have a large number of regulars, some coming from as far as Cardiff.

"When you take the time to advise a customer to try a product and it works, they will always come back," says Carol. We'll give them as much time as it takes to advise and suggest a choice of products without ramming it down their throats, so they don't feel pressurised."

Apart from daughter Cathryn, there are a number of part-timers who take it in turns to help in the shop. Carol's sister, Sandra, who has also done the NAHS certificate, works two days", Fran, who works 1&1/2 days; and Jill, who works once a fortnight and according to John "is being drilled in for the holiday rush". There are also two Saturday cashiers who work alter-nate weeks, Colette and Stephen who's the Powells' nephew.

Apart from relatives and friends of the family, John adheres to specific criteria when employing staff. "I look for a mature lady with enough experience of life to answer customers' problems, usually on a personal level. I don't want them to have to learn about health foods and natural remedies, but to have already learnt and be naturally interested in health matters - preferably to have a personal knowledge and experience of alternative therapies." There is, undoubtedly, nothing beating personal, first-hand experience.

Their own complaint about the shop is the lack of space. They have felt the need to expand over the last three years but there is nowhere to expand to. They also have no stockroom, which Carol complains most about since she has had to sacrifice the use of her sunroom in their nearby Blackpill home.

Organic bread is delivered daily from St Fagan's Folk Museum where visitors can visit a working replica of an old forge and watch bread being made in the traditional manner in an old-fashioned bakery. St Fagan's also delivers organic Bara-brith (Welsh tea bread), organic fruitcake and 100 per cent sour dough rye.

Wholemeal and granary bread are also delivered from Kenny's, a local bakery, along with pasties and organic Welsh cakes.

Several skin care ranges are stocked - Tiki, Hymosa and Nature's Secret, and BWC cos-metics will be available soon. John and Carol are both very keen to stock more cosmetics but are again somewhat thwarted by the limited space factor.

Other recent additions include organic porridge and organic yogurt from Rachel's Dairy.

 The major supplements lines stocked are Quest, Healthcrafts, Natures Aid, Potters, Gerard House and Lanes, with best sellers being Kwai Garlic, Healthcrafts and Quest's Royal Jelly and Vitamin C, Quest's Multivitamin and Mineral supplement and Lanes' Maxivit.

John and Carol always strive to keep to NAHS guidelines. They stock no meat prod-ucts, no white processed foods and only free Tange eggs. They stress this point emphatically.

"Our customers appreciate that th whatever they pick up, they know it will be safe or contain no meat," says John. "We do get a lot of people mistaking us for a delicatessen (and a chemist and a newsagents) and they wonder why we don't have say, white flour or white rice. But we must stick to our guns. We are a wholefood shop.

"However, people are beginning to realise the difference between our products and super-market products, and they do make a point of asking for dried fruit without mineral oil or unbleached flour. Health food I shops have got to be one step ahead of customers' needs."

Carol and John's dream would be to have a restaurant adjoining the shop. Their only fear about the future is that vitamins will be sold in chemists only as a result of EC harmonisation in 1992.

"I think it would be terrible for remedies to be controlled by people who are not only inadequately trained, but who also have no knowledge of whole/health food products and the importance of diet," says John. "However, pre 1992, I support the NAHS and hope they'll negotiate good terms."

LATEST: In 2005 Carol and John decided to retire and sold their shop as an ongoing business.