August 12, 2004

O.G. to close if no buyer emerges by end of month

Just a year and a half after purchasing the Organic Grocery, the store’s owners, Carrie Powers and Nancy Mitchell, have agreed to sell the business.

Though the O.G. has been on the market since July, Powers said the O.G. hasn’t received any inquiries in the past month, and the business could possibly go to the highest bidder on eBay.

Working between her full-time teaching job as a chemistry professor at Clark State Community College, Mitchell is trying to keep the O.G. open for several hours a day. In addition to her full-time job in Springfield, Powers is in the process of selling a restaurant and bar she owns in Springfield and has no time to participate in the closing, she said.

Powers and Mitchell hope to liquidate the O.G.’s stock at a 15 percent discount and sell the business as an organic food store.

The O.G. will close officially at the end of August, when Mitchell’s teaching schedule intensifies. If no one has presented an appealing offer on the business by then, Mitchell said she and Powers would consider selling off the equipment and leasing the space. Though Mitchell preferred not to discuss it, Powers said that she has thought about selling the O.G. on eBay and will continue to consider the online market as a possible option.

Powers and Mitchell purchased the O.G. in February 2003 from Maria Thornton-Buckley and Ras Shaggai and signed a three-year lease with Wanita Murphy, who owns the Emporium and its building. They were both committed to other jobs, but thought they could handle the business with manager Cristina Hipp supervising the day-to-day operations, Powers said.

Though Mitchell had no experience owning a food store, she said she made the decision to finance the O.G. in a three-minute exchange with Powers because she thought, “someone needs to buy that store and it might as well be me.”

“A lot of people depended on this store, and I hated to see something that established in the town go by the wayside,” Mitchell said.

But when Hipp took a job elsewhere in Yellow Springs and the store’s next manager was injured in an accident this spring, it didn’t take long for the two owners to realize that neither of them had time to run a business. Though several of the store’s employees stepped up to help, and one of them considered turning the store into a co-op business, a plan never materialized to buy the store, Mitchell said.

During their time at the O.G., Powers’s other commitments in Springfield always kept her visits to Yellow Springs rare. But Mitchell tried to be available after work for several hours each day to do the deli prep cooking and take care of loose ends, she said. Business was slow but steady, Mitchell said, though she remembers days in the winter when the store was open for nine hours and didn’t even sell $100 worth of merchandise, she said.

Finances had little to do with the decision to close the store, said Mitchell, who was able to reinvest everything the O.G. made back into the business for maintenance and larger purchase orders. But time was always an issue, she said, and she found herself, after teaching all day, coming to the store at 8 or 9 p.m., and staying until midnight, she said.

“It was demanding to be that busy, and I always felt bad about not being here more,” she said.

Mitchell said she has received inquiries from five people, some of whom are local and others as far away as Columbus. Some are interested in purchasing the business or the grocery equipment, including the bulk bins, shelving, refrigerator cases, freezer and produce case. Others have inquired about leasing the space and using it for other purposes, she said.

She said she likes having an organic store in Yellow Springs and has always supported the O.G. because it was a small, local business. Both she and Powers prefer to sell the business to someone who wants to maintain it as an organic grocery, but they are willing to entertain whatever offers come their way.

—Lauren Heaton