By NOLA L. SARKISIAN
Staff Reporter
Sandy Gooch’s kitchen is just what you would expect from the woman who founded Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Food Markets.
Built with recycled lumber, its shelves are lined with such cookbook titles as “Hydroponic Tomatoes,” and its walk-in pantry is bursting with juicers and pasta makers.
It’s all part of Sandy Gooch’s newest venture: blending aesthetics and ecology.
After selling her seven-store chain in 1993 in a $56 million stock deal, she and husband Harry Lederman launched a new business designing and building homes that feature solar power and other energy-efficient technology.
Their firm, Leading Design Partners, so far has sold three homes for at least $3 million each. (One of their customers was Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.)
It’s another example of Gooch’s talent for turning crisis into opportunity. She says she suffered an emotional crisis after selling her Sherman Oaks-based stores to Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Markets.
“I felt like I was giving up my baby, and that was very painful for me,” says the 61-year-old Gooch, who lives in Beverly Hills. “But I had learned that sometimes gifts are presented to you, and you don’t realize it. The path you start on isn’t necessarily the path you end up on.”
Gooch started her chain of markets in 1977 after encountering a different kind of crisis. Then a public school teacher in Culver City, she suffered intense allergic reactions to tetracycline that left her bedridden. When the chest pains and fevers persisted after she stopped taking the medicine, she sought advice from a number of doctors, but none were able to help her.
Fed up, she took her health into her own hands, doing extensive research that led to drastic changes in her diet. “I tore threw my cupboard, throwing away every product that had -ic, -ite, or -ade on it, and I brought in things that were brown,” Gooch recalls.
But finding products made with whole-wheat flour in major grocery stores was all but impossible.
“I grew exasperated,” Gooch says. “I traveled from Santa Barbara to San Diego to find healthier items, and finally I said there had to be a better way.”
With $92,000 from her savings, friends and retirement fund, Gooch formed a partnership with Dan Volland and opened the first Mrs. Gooch’s in 1977 at Palms Boulevard and Centinela Avenue in Mar Vista. Six more stores followed. Banned from their shelves were beer, wine, cigarettes, caffeine, chocolate, hydrogenated oils and refined white flour and sugar.
The long hours Gooch logged building the chain eventually took a toll on her family. In 1980, she divorced her husband, Ed Gooch, after 19 years of marriage. Meanwhile, her mother was diagnosed with leukemia and her father with prostate cancer. She also learned her daughter was dyslexic.
“Those were rough times, but I’m fortunate to have had the support of family and friends to weather the storm,” Gooch says.
So, where does Gooch shop now?
Mostly at Whole Foods or Wild Oats markets, but once in a while she stops at Ralphs as a matter of convenience. “It’s sad, it’s sterile, they just don’t get it,” she says.
