Natural start

Eating “green” is hip, but not hip enough to keep a much-loved local organic café afloat.

Just as Main Market Co-op prepares to open, another business selling organic, locavore food will close. Natural Start Café, near Gonzaga University, served its last customers on Sunday. When it re-opens as a “college-hangout” coffee joint, it will no longer carry exclusively organic products — most of which come from within a 30-mile radius of Spokane — in the way that Natural Start did.

Citing financial hardship, co-owner Marc Gauthier is selling his share of the business to his partner. Gauthier and his business partner, Gib Sharpe, believe that the hip-coffee-shop model will be more lucrative. “We’re going to take a break from baking,” Shape says. He’ll contract with Taste for all the baked goods and continue serving Doma Coffee.

But for Gauthier, opening Natural Start two years ago was more about promoting the organic, local lifestyle than owning a business. If it’s not about the movement, he’s not interested.

So Gauthier will instead direct his energy toward other businesses in Spokane pursuing the same mission — namely Coffee Social (113 W. Indiana Ave.) and the Main Market Co-op (opening soon at 44 W. Main Ave.). “I would like to see the organic community communicating better,” he says, pointing to the large number of small local farmers markets as an example of poor coordination in the local and organic foods movement: “It’s frustrating when even the people who are on your team are fighting.”

Gauthier says Spokane is a tough market in which to sell the organic and local concept. “It is an uphill battle here in Spokane and we knew that starting off,” he says. “We’re the only place in town selling free-range, organic chicken anything, and [Subway across the street] is booming all day.”

He’d hoped to see that battle through, but in the end, couldn’t continue to make ends meet. “It was just numbers,” he says. “I basically couldn’t afford to wait for Spokane to catch up.”

In late August, The Inlander spoke with Gauthier about the “buy local” label, a concept he says corporations have cashed in on to the detriment of consumers. The word “local” is now thrown around with no real definition, and corporations lobby to ease standards for the USDA “organic” label, he says, “diluting” its meaning.

Then, Gauthier said the shop was “surviving,” having intentionally positioned itself to compete with a Starbucks in hopes that their comparable prices and locavore ethos would give them an edge among social justice-savvy Gonzaga students. But consumers rarely distinguish between, say, partially fair-trade coffee from Starbucks and a salad from Natural Start made with greens grown just outside of Spokane. That makes it tough, Gauthier says, to compete with Starbucks’ advertising budget and brand recognition. “Corporations are to blame. That’s who I blame. I blame Starbucks,” he says. “I think this corporate model we’ve set up is failing us — we’re setting ourselves up for a huge failure because we don’t produce anything [locally] anymore.”

While the hegemony of Starbucks is a factor in the difficulties any small local coffee shop has staying open, the closing of Natural Start raises questions about the ability of the burgeoning locavore movement to sustain itself in Spokane. – ERIKA PRINS

The café formerly known as Natural Start, 1718 N. Hamilton, will reopen Dec. 1. Call 483-3366 for information and hours of operation.