After 44 years in business, Chris and Kevin Schneider have sold Mother Earth’s Storehouse to Healthy Choice Markets 3, LLC, a rapidly growing Hollywood, Florida health and nutrition company. The two Mother Earth stores are in King’s Mall in Ulster and on Main Street in Saugerties. A third location, in Poughkeepsie, closed in September 2020.
The Schneider brothers opened the first organic and all-natural Mother Earth’s Storehouse in 1978, at a time when there were few if any health-food stores in the Kingston-Ulster area. “Live well … naturally” was their motto. They pioneered thinking local.
Their niche was selling locally produced food and supplements. “Few if any of the corporate stores gave serious consideration to health-conscious customers,” their website explains. “It was a fringe of the market that they were willing to ignore.
Mother Earth’s Storehouse now has ten departments. They are: produce, bulk items, cafe and deli, vitamins and supplements, grocery, bakery, prepared foods, cheese and dairy, and personal care.
The acquirer is a subsidiary of Healthier Choices Management Corp. (HCMC), a publicly traded holding company “focused on providing consumers with healthier daily choices with respect to nutrition and other lifestyle alternatives.”
HCMC owns Ada’s, a health-food store in Fort Myers, Florida, and Paradise health foods, which has three locations in Melbourne, Florida. “Mother Earth’s Storehouse is a major step forward in our growth initiatives,” said CEO Jeffrey Holman, “and based upon past performance, we believe this addition should roughly double HCMC’s top-line revenue on an annualized basis.”
Through Healthy Choice Wellness, LLC, the company operates an IV therapy center in Roslyn Heights, New York offering multiple IV drip “cocktails” for clients to choose from. There are cocktails for health, beauty and re-hydration. HCMC also has a licensing agreement for a Healthy Choice Wellness Center at the Casbah Spa and Salon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Through its wholly owned subsidiary, Healthy U Wholesale, HCMC sells vitamins and supplements, as well as health, beauty and personal-care products.