Harvest Fresh marks 30 years in McMinnville, 25 in downtown

Rusty Rae/News-Register##Kristen Schofield and Susan Sanford with some of the colorful cauliflower their store, Harvest Fresh Grocery and Deli, is carrying this fall — purchased from a local farmer who’s been supplying the store since the women bought it 30 years ago. In addition to produce, the Third Street store carries groceries, bulk foods, wine, vitamins and supplements and prepared food in its deli.

Rusty Rae/News-Register##Rabbits are depicted on the walls and shelves of Harvest Fresh. Sanford chose the bunny mascot when the store moved downtown, inspired by the real rabbits that showed up regularly at the old location on Highway 99W.

Back in 1994, when Susan Sanford and Kristen Schofield bought Harvest Fresh, shoppers were just starting to embrace buying natural, organic and local produce and other products.

Now it’s a given that stores will showcase those qualities. Back then, though, Harvest Fresh was one of the few places that stocked a wide variety of those types of products, year-round.

The fresh and local emphasis has helped the grocery store survive and thrive over three decades and one location change — moving from Highway 99W near the Baker Street Y to Third and Cowls streets downtown.

Offering local products is the right thing to do, said Schofield and Sanford, a native of Colorado, the nexus of the local/natural food movement.

“We get to pick and choose what we carry. Local items are better, fresher and you know their origins,” Schofield said, adding that many organic items taste better, such as Yukon gold potatoes and broccoli.

Additionally, she said, “we like supporting the local farming community.”

Harvest Fresh also has expanded its product line over the years, often because customers have requested certain items or brands, such as Muir Glen or Woodstock, Schofield said.

Now aisles of groceries dominate the store, along with a large area for a wide variety of fresh, local produce, from Draper corn to goat’s milk from Molalla and tomatoes from Gaston to apples from Hood River, plus staples such as potatoes and lettuce, bananas and oranges.

Bulk foods, such as rice and other grains, nuts and dried fruits, occupy one wall; other areas offer wine or a variety of fresh breads. Several shelves display dietary supplements and vitamins, which represent 10 to 15% of the store’s business.

Since she and her partner took over, they’ve also added and expanded a deli, which is busy selling sandwiches, salads and precooked items by the pound, along with Stumptown coffee, juice and desserts. Muffins, croissants, carrot cake, and other desserts are made or baked in-house.

Deli sales make up about 28% of the business, with about 40% groceries and 10% produce.

Schofield said Harvest Fresh recently added breakfast burritos, quiche and frittatas to its deli menu. It also now offers a salad bar.

Schofield said catering also is a large part of the store’s business these days. Harvest Fresh caters events, business gatherings, service club meetings and other occasions. She said she talks with new clients about what they want, then offers several potential menus for them to choose from.

It’s been a good 30 years of learning, meeting farmers and working with customers.

“This is a great community,” Schofield said. Running Harvest Fresh has been more than a business, she said; it’s also about “quality of life.”

The store will mark its 30th anniversary under Schofield and Sanford’s ownership and 25th year downtown during “Harvest Days,” Oct. 14 to 19.

Harvest Fresh usually has a weeklong celebration each October, but this year’s will be more of a celebration because of the special anniversaries, Schofield said.

It will feature food samples, product give-aways, a drawing for prizes, discounts, a guess-the-weight-of-the-pumpkin contest and carving of a giant jack-o-lantern by artist Totem Shriver.

In the 1980s, Harvest Fresh grew out of a merger between the produce stand Dave Spicer was running at Incahoots and the Yamhill Valley Co-op in the 700 block of Third Street. The combined shop opened in a building on Highway 99W that later became Mac Auto Pros.

When Spicer put the business up for sale, Sanford and Schofield were living in Gaston, thinking about their own business.

Schofield had been working in restaurants in Portland, spending 12 hours a day getting to and doing the job. Sanford was running a cleaning business, working fewer hours and making more money, Schofield said with a laugh.

They wanted to invest in something together, using her food skills and Sanford’s business skills.

Harvest Fresh sounded like the right opportunity, especially given their interest in natural products and local foods. Each one spent three weeks at the business, working alongside the owner. Then, together, they decided to become grocery store owners.

“We started on a shoestring, with our credit cards maxed out,” Schofield said. She recalled an early payday when they didn’t have enough, so she borrowed money from her mother to cover the checks.

Business was good on 99W, but picked up when the store moved into the 1911 building downtown that had previously held a video and furniture rental store, Ben Franklin and, in the 1940s, Columbia Grocery.

Harvest Fresh became a downtown hub as foot traffic increased yearly. Workers came in for lunch, people stopped by for groceries on the way home or for produce year-round.

When the McMinnville Farmers Market started across the street at Third and Cowls, it drew business to Harvest Fresh, as well. Shoppers often went to the market for vegetables, then came by Harvest Fresh for milk and staples, for instance.

Fewer people go both places these days, since the market has moved a block farther south, Schofield said. There also are fewer people downtown at lunchtime, since the pandemic led to more people working remotely.

Lifestyle changes in society also have affected the business, she said. For instance, fewer people can their own fruits and vegetables these days; at one time, the store sold 20 cases of peaches a day, and now that’s down to two cases, for instance.

More people want ready-to-eat food to take home or eat at the store. At lunchtime, Harvest Fresh always is filled with customers ordering sandwiches, salads and other items, keeping the store’s 22 employees busy.

“They’re all passionate about customer service. They like people,” she said.

Schofield enjoys being able to continue using her cooking skills at Harvest Fresh, both in the deli and for catering jobs.

“It’s kinda fun. I can explore different foods,” she said of the latter. She once prepared the meal for the Celtic Alliance’s Burns Supper, for instance, and not only learned to cook haggis, but developed a recipe for a veggie haggis, as well.

She often makes the soups. Two varieties are available every day, and one of the two is vegetarian, such as a recent offering, golden cauliflower with coconut milk, turmeric and curry.

Schofield said she was inspired to create the soup by a delivery of large, colorful cauliflower from a farm that’s been one of her suppliers for 30 years now. The heads come in purple and yellow, as well as white.

Roasted vegetables and several prepared salads are in the dairy case, along with freshly cooked meats and other items, such as cabbage rolls. One of the biggest sellers is curried chicken salad, available by the pound or on a sandwich. Customers won’t let her take the curried chicken off the menu, Schofield said.

She grew up in New Jersey and went to high school in California, then worked for Hanna-Barbera after graduating. Then, drawn to the food industry, she drove back east and attended culinary school in Boston.

That led to a series of restaurant jobs: at a Jewish deli during school, then another deli in San Francisco; at Hyatt Hotels, a French restaurant in Los Angeles; then as a manager and executive chef.

By the late 1980s, buying local was become popular, and she sought out local sources for meat and other products used in her kitchens.

In 1989, following a large earthquake in San Francisco, Schofield moved to Oregon, settling in Portland where a friend lived. “It had a different vibe then; not as progressive,” she recalled.

She and Sanford moved to Gaston, then to McMinnville after buying Harvest Fresh. They had a farm with horses, as well as dogs and cats.

In addition to its groceries and deli foods, Harvest Fresh is known for its logo, a rabbit sometimes seen enjoying some carrots and other vegetables.

The cute mascot isn’t something Sanford and Schofield simply dreamed up. Rather, it’s a nod to the store’s former location, when rabbits regularly showed up to forage in the displays of produce out front.

When then-McMinnville Downtown Association Manager Patti Webb talked them into moving to Third Street in 1999, Sanford and Schofield symbolically brought one of the rabbits with them.

At first, Schofield said, the mascot was depicted as a rather skinny creature; now it looks as well-fed as the real rabbits that frequented the old place.

It goes to show how healthy one can be eating fresh, local food, she said.