Green Earth Health Food
Market Plants New Roots

Dean Roberts Plans Second Outlet On Southside,
Featuring Most Of Same Items, Plus Drive-Through

By LIBBY CUDMORE

Oneonta – This spring, you’ll be able to enjoy the Green Earth’s delicious organic soups, sandwiches, salads and drinks – to go.
“Our new store will have a drive-through window,” said proprietor Dean Roberts. “We’ll have meals, so you can drive up and say, ‘I’ll have a coffee and a #3.’”
Roberts, who has owned the Green Earth on South Market Street in downtown Oneonta since 2011, will open a second location in March at the Southside Chiropractic campus on Route 23.
“We got an enticing offer from Southside Chiropractic,” he said. “It helps fit into their health and wellness campus.”
In addition to Southside Chiropractic, the campus also hosts the Advanced Nutrition Center and the Sports Performance Rehabilitation Center.
“They’re really dynamic,” he said. “With what they’re doing, I believe they could be as much of a draw to Oneonta as the baseball camps, and we’re happy to be a part of it.”
“There’s no business that more aligns with our business than the Green Earth,” said Shirley Rufrano, a chiropractor and a nutritionist. “Helping people naturally is what we do. I always say we’re feeding people back to health!”
The Southside location will be “a replica” of what you might see at the main store, with a slightly smaller footprint. “We’ll stock around 500 of our most popular items,” he said.
It won’t have the community room, Roberts noted, but the campus offers spaces for yoga classes and other community events. “We think Southside could really be the profit center for the Green Earth.”
The Southside location wouldn’t have the solar panels that the Market Street location has, but Roberts has not ruled out putting together a solar array on the land behind the campus. “They’d be good on the open land over there,” he said.
And best of all, the new location has parking.
“So many people say ‘I love your store, I go every time I can find a parking space’,” he said. “We do over a million dollars a year, but we feel like our lack of parking has really hindered our growth.”
Roberts noted that the city did recently approve 15-minute parking outside of the store to increase the turnover for the convenience of shoppers.
And there may be changes coming to the Market Street location too. “We’ve talked about expanding the restaurant and doing more to emphasize that,” he said. “We’ve started doing ‘We Cook Wednesdays,’ where our customers can come in and pick up a hot, ready-made meal to take home. That’s an area we can really expand on.”
They also plan on introducing online ordering in the near future, allowing busy shoppers to fill their basket and have it ready for pickup – or even delivery.
“There are a lot of directions you can take with this store that don’t involve parking,” he said.
But with both locations, he’s looking into ways to increase customer loyalty to the Green Earth. “Most of our customers also go to Hannaford and Price Chopper,” he said.
“We want to encourage larger baskets for people who shop here. That means comparison shopping and offering better prices on staples like butter and milk, and asking people why they don’t buy what they need here and how we can get them to do so.”
Roberts said he plans to open the store March 1. “It’s a good move,” he said.
“Just because we’re a small town doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have access to natural health and wellness,” said Rufrano.
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