The Origin Story of Bloomingfoods
By Tracy Rosen
Bloomingfoods was born out the Earth Kitchen restaurant, sprinkled with the members of May Creek Farm, and embraced by the most loving and caring/sharing members of the 1975 – 1976 Bloomington hippie community. The ringleader was my best friend (till the day he died), David LoCascio. The man was a visionary (and a regular human being) in addition to being the smartest guy I ever knew.
The short version is we all ate at the Earth Kitchen, dreamed of living at May Creek Farm, and needed a place to buy groceries. Marsh and Kroger were the big dogs in the supermarket segment, and their “organic” food departments were still decades away. The Whole Earth Catalog was our resource center and Operation Manual for Spaceship Earth was our “reach” document. Baba Ram Das came and gave a talk in town, and many of us shared a spiritual trip via the Holy Order of MANS. The war in Vietnam officially ended April 30, 1975, while the seeds of Bloomingfoods were being planted.
Bob Lucas’ “The Dancer Inside You” and Carolyn Peyton’s “Intuition” were playing around town, and John Cougar’s breakout album was still 3 years away.
The overriding memory I have of the creation of Bloomingfoods was the sense of community effort from the beginning. Dave’s vision was always co-operative, and everybody was invited. The early meetings were bananas (and about bananas). Imagine having the smartest visionary you ever met (who did not have a natural inclination to patience) running meetings where absolutely every person was given the opportunity to say their piece on virtually any topic that was important to them (and possibly only them)! Everyone was equally important, although not everyone was equally articulate or visionary. Don’t get me wrong, there were occasional “screw this, I’m out of here” moments, but on balance it was love and sharing and shared goals. The oldest of us was young 30’s and the youngest was old teenagers. I was 24 and knew just about nothing about anything!
My recollection is we all felt like we had given birth to something. Nobody (maybe Dave) was looking too far ahead, and our goal was to be able to pay for the next produce order. I left to start my real job in December 1976 and am thrilled and delighted to see how kind the years have been to our “kid”.
The one picture with the new Bloomingfoods sign not yet hung, with John Ketchum and David Greider on guitars, Chip Pritchard on bass, and David LoCascio on Bush beer can pretty much captures the scene. Work hard, play some music, drink a beer and know that you did it together.