Fairytale in the Supermarket

On April 27, 1979, workers in the production, trucking, shipping, and kitchen departments at Erewhon Trading Company voted to form a union affiliated with Local 925 of the Services Employees International Union (SEIU). Discontent had been brewing for some time. The company began in 1966 as a small “macrobiotic” grocer with two hundred customers and a single storefront on Newbury Street in Boston. After its incorporation in 1968, Erewhon moved into a larger and more upscale store and, more importantly, purchased a warehouse and began wholesale distribution of its natural foods products to regional purchasers. It also expanded to Los Angeles, with the same storefront-and-warehouse business model. By 1973, Erewhon had fifteen thousand customers at its stores and almost three hundred thousand wholesale customers. It was a big business, or at least a bigger business—like the natural foods industry overall, which saw its sales multiply from $60 million to $600 million between 1968 and 1973.