April, 2021 - USA News Journal

I’m standing in New Moon Natural Foods on a Wednesday, late in the morning. The locally owned Truckee health food market is bustling. Patrons stroll aisles, admire the kale, browse the essential oils on display, fill up a caddy with craft beers. I grab a peach-flavored kombucha from the cooler and make my way to the checkout line. As the cashier rings me up, I ask if he’s seen Billy Griffin around. Not in yet, the cashier says.Over the past year, the communities in Truckee and Lake Tahoe have undergone a rapid, profound transformation. Through it all — the pandemic, the uncertainty, the wave upon wave of people arriving from out of town, many ignoring stay-at-home rules — New Moon sat at the center, providing food and goods for purchase to everyone. It’s also the place town residents, new and old alike, are most likely to bump into each other. Looking for someone to summarize the past year and the changes Truckee’s seen, I sought out Griffin, who owns New Moon Natural Foods. Recently, Griffin published an opinion in the local newspaper, Moonshine Ink, about Truckee’s rapid ascension to a Zoom town, a phenomenon named for the influx of transplants who can suddenly work from home. His piece was titled: “How not to be an invasive species.” He muses about what it means to be a “local” (he’s originally from Boston), how newcomers can better embrace Tahoe's culture and how locals can better welcome newcomers. He writes: “Locals have long welcomed visitors to the area. We love to share the beauty of our environs, and visitors are an important lifeblood to the economy. But their attitudes don’t always jibe with local ways.” To locals and newcomers, alike, Griffin shared some advice in his column: “Don’t be a d*ck! It’s a small town and you’re not anonymous,” he wrote in a list of don’ts. “Take time to know your neighbors,” he counters, in the list of dos. Grocery stores in small towns are a community commons. You might go in for a quick stop to grab a kombucha only to run into your neighbors, friends and colleagues and emerge 45 minutes later with a full update on the comings and goings of town. New Moon is the epitome of that small town kind of market. It is locally owned. It also sources its food and products from local growers, farmers, bakeries, ranchers and artisans. The store's longtime employees have been working here for decades. New Moon employees make smoothies and wheat grass shots in Truckee, Calif.Ryan Salm/ Special to SFGATE There are two markets, this one in Truckee and another in Tahoe City. Both are always busy — especially this past year. In the first weeks of the pandemic, New Moon’s business doubled. The Truckee New Moon is situated in a shopping center on Donner Pass Road, next to a coffee shop, a Mexican rotisserie, a sushi restaurant and the DMV. Finding a parking spot is always a challenge here. A bright, merry rainbow greets patrons on the windows outside the store; it’s a symbol of resilience and unity in the pandemic, painted by a local artist. The cashier is handing me a receipt when I look up and spot Griffin. He’s taken two steps inside the front doors when he is stopped by a growing group of friends and customers who want to say hi. Escaping the busy morning in the market, Griffin and I find a quieter place to have a conversation at a table just outside of Zuri, the coffee shop next door. His cheeks are rosy from too much sun on the ski slopes the day before and he shields his head with a straw fedora. A self-described “bologna and white bread kid,” Griffin moved to Tahoe in the 1990s. A persistent knee injury led him to acupuncture, which became the gateway to Griffin’s education about the food system and sustainability, a journey that led him to New Moon Natural Foods. New Moon’s roots in Tahoe date before Griffin’s time, back to 1976. It began out of a van. A small group of Tahoe residents, hungry for fresh produce, organized a co-op delivery service. It was originally called Mountain People’s Warehouse. Eventually, the van delivery morphed into a Tahoe City storefront, renamed the Tahoe Community Market and run by a longtime local named Mark Calhoun. In the 1990s, Calhoun opened a second market in Truckee. Organic produce and healthy living are part of the mainstream diet now, but back in those early days, New Moon was an anomaly, carving out its own niche in Tahoe. It was a small but strong establishment for a loyal group of patrons who preferred natural foods over processed. Griffin was a general manager when he bought the Truckee store from Calhoun in 1997. Several years later, he bought the Tahoe City store. Griffin renamed the markets, once more, to New Moon Natural Foods. Like many aspects of Griffin’s business, the name is intentional, representing a larger purpose and mission. Its website explains that new moons represent new beginnings, planting new seeds, starting new endeavors. “I wanted to create a place where we all felt ownership,” Griffin said. “It’s this social responsibility. People who tend to come to health food stores — or natural food stores is a better way to describe it these days — you tend to have an ethic and you’re living a lifestyle. You believe in something.” Kevin Kremler makes his way to the beer section to help out a customer.Ryan Salm/ Special to SFGATE In all those lunar cycles and trips around the sun, 2020 stands apart. In the first weeks of the pandemic — when restaurants shuttered, toilet paper became scarce, Bay Area transplants settled for the long haul in Tahoe and grocery carts were overflowing with nonperishable goods — New Moon’s business increased 100%, Griffin told me. The months that followed settled into a less hectic pace, but still sustained about 50-80% growth. The sudden spike in business during the pandemic felt chaotic and overwhelming. “I likened my role to being a captain of a schooner in the 19th century in a storm,” Griffin told me, describing how he felt in those first weeks of March 2020. He continued the metaphor: His staff was all hands on deck, responding to the wave crashing on them immediately while Griffin was trying to look into the uncertain future and steer his business in the best direction forward. Any small business owner can relate, though New Moon was fortunate to land on the up side of the coin toss for business regulations in COVID. Not only were grocery stores essential, but in the aftermath of the pandemic, Tahoe was quickly overrun with transplants and day visitors. People have to eat, and with restaurants scaled back, Tahoe’s grocery stores bore the brunt of the demand. New Moon has had a first-hand vantage point to watch the changes taking place in their community in real time. “I would work here. I’d go home. I’d be with my family. I’d put my kids to bed and then I would work again until 3 in the morning,” Griffin said. “At that point, it was doing research. We didn’t know so much. You’re trying to do right by your community. You’re trying to do right by your customers and your employees. You’re trying to do the safe thing. But also, we saw ourselves as stewards of the community. We have to have food for people.” At the same time, Griffin was well tuned in to the vulnerabilities the community was facing. “Even just securing the supply chain and just getting on the phone with distributors, like, are we going to get this order? Because I’ve got a community to feed here.” New Moon Natural Foods in Truckee sources its food from local farmers. Ryan Salm/ Special to SFGATE He gives credit to his employees for carrying New Moon through such a wild year. “They were mission-driven. They believed in what they were doing. It didn’t require any coaxing on my part,” Griffin said. “They showed up at 6 a.m. They stayed late. They did what they had to do to serve their community and I’m so proud of them.” Griffin’s staff is tight knit, and he gives many of his employees free rein to follow their passions. That’s the reason New Moon’s beer selection is so good. Griffin says he’s lost count of how many employees, former and current, have met at New Moon and later gotten married. Long before the pandemic, one of Griffin’s epiphanies as a business owner was discovering an “untapped labor market of high-quality people” who believed in the mission of his business, and who nobody else wanted to hire. Not the ski resorts. Not the hotels. Not the fancy restaurants nor the golf courses with strict dress codes. Who were these hard-working people? “They were men and women with dreadlocks,” Griffin said. Many of those dreadlocked employees still work at New Moon, though hiring has become an even bigger challenge. (And nowadays, many more businesses allow dreadlocks and tattoos in the dress code.) Griffin said most of New Moon's turnover is in their entry level positions, which pay $15 an hour. It boils down to Truckee’s housing crisis. The cost of housing doesn’t match the hourly rates New Moon can afford to pay new employees. He’s also had a few longtime employees lose their homes. “My general manager’s house is getting sold out from under him and he has a great relationship with his landlord. It just makes sense for the landlord to sell right now, to cash out,” Griffin said. “Fortunately he found a place to live. But that would be devastating to me if we lost our general manager.” Long-term employee Pete Sherman does a quick shop after a shift at New Moon Natural Foods.Ryan Salm/ Special to SFGATE Supplying nutritious, fresh, locally sourced food to the Tahoe community is the purpose New Moon was founded upon more than four decades ago. The need has always been great. Tahoe’s grocery supply has long been dominated by big box chains with shelves stocked full of processed foods. Some of the stores are better than others when it comes to produce. Lacking in options, many Tahoe residents drive an hour or longer to Reno to go grocery shopping. It’s not only cheaper to shop in Reno, but there’s also a Trader Joe’s. In 2019, when Whole Foods opened a store in South Lake Tahoe, people were so excited for a new place to shop, the line to get into the store on opening day wrapped around the building. Last June, two highly anticipated grocery stores opened in Truckee: a Grocery Outlet and the flagship Raley’s O-N-E, a new concept that elevates the average Raley’s to something more on par with Whole Foods. After a long time of deliberation, Truckee’s town council unanimously approved both stores three years ago to address the dearth of grocery options. The competition with the new grocery stores added another layer of complexity to New Moon’s past year. A year since that chaotic month in March, Griffin says business is up just slightly. New Moon’s growth was stymied by the new Grocery Outlet and Raley’s. Still, there are more people in Tahoe. In the end, they’ve come out “a little bit ahead,” Griffin said. When the pandemic’s urgency settled down, Griffin started to look a little further beyond his store’s front doors to the community. Considering the boon to his business, Griffin says his approach to helping the community was to pay it forward. New Moon received a PPP loan, and after buying a new salad bar and a few other pandemic-related upgrades, he used the money to pay his employees higher wages. When Christmas came around, New Moon didn't have an employee party. Instead, Griffin used those funds to buy gift cards to local restaurants to give to his employees. At that time, restaurants were ordered closed by state health officials, shutting them down during their busiest week of the year. Buying gift cards was Griffin's way of spreading cash to businesses that needed it. “We tried to make decisions that helped our community without it being exactly charity,” Griffin said. “Just infuse cash into the situation, to get people from here to there.” 1of6New Moon Natural Foods is a locally owned market in Truckee, Calif.Ryan Salm/ Special to SFGATEShow MoreShow Less 2of6In the first weeks of the pandemic, business spiked at New Moon Natural Foods in Truckee, Calif.Ryan Salm/ Special to SFGATEShow MoreShow Less3of6 4of6View from the produce section of New Moon Natural Foods in Truckee, Calif.Ryan Salm/ Special to SFGATEShow MoreShow Less 5of6New Moon Natural Foods in Truckee, Calif.Ryan Salm/ Special to SFGATEShow MoreShow Less6of6 Now, New Moon is looking up again, to the next wave coming forward. It's hard to know whether this growth will continue. One of the biggest questions that Truckee's facing right now is: Will all these new residents and customers stay? "Who do you even call a resident?" Griffin said. "Is it just someone camping out for three months in their summer home? Or in their second home? They count as residents. They're in the community. Maybe their kids aren't going to school here, but they're buying food and they're not just here for the weekend." In a way, New Moon may be waxing once again, to an entirely new chapter. After a year locked inside, maybe some of those residents — new and old — will have more opportunities to bump into each other in the aisles of New Moon Natural Foods. "It's that connection, from people to people," Griffin said. "You build that network of people and then you build a community. The business is the engine, driving the possibilities." More Lake Tahoe News

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