A Poelstra Family Original

For those who like the family story...

The Taste of Life natural foods store began in the garage of the Poelstra home in 1997. Donna was looking for a more economical way to purchase healthy foods for her family. The first item she found was the wonderful chicken that we still sell today. In order to get a wholesale price, she had to purchase a 40 lb case. She just zippy-bagged it up, and was set for quite awhile. Well, as she shared her good find with friends, they wanted to get a 10 lb. bag and help her out by not having to keep so much for herself. By word of mouth, more and more moms contacted her and wanted in on the great price she could get for the all natural chicken. Eight years later, she was emailing over 500 families and taking orders every 3 weeks.

Donna’s philosophy has been to feed her family the best all natural or organic foods, but to stay within her family budget. Most families can only buy what their checkbook allows. But, most moms really want to protect their family’s health by staying away from all the pesticides, preservatives, and unhealthy processed foods. This can prove to be an interesting challenge as we all know how expensive organic buying can be.

Donna was homeschooling her 3 children during this time. “Co-op day” became a schooling day for the kids by serving customers, doing math by tallying invoices, and learning to be entrepreneurs by assisting in the weighing of chicken and bagging produce. It truly became the Poelstra family business.

As our group of moms continued buying chicken together, we decided to branch out and find other meats. We hooked up with as many local providers as possible for beef, buffalo, pork and then also wild fish. The search is always on for the best products out there with the most reasonable price for our families. We will always check our sources for integrity and quality.

All of this was developing into quite a large “grocery market”. We were getting organic produce and Donna was baking fresh whole wheat breads. We’d get specials on turkeys for Thanksgiving and lamb and prime rib for Christmas, and it just kept growing. When we were trying to get 150 cars through our driveway every 3rd Thursday, we realized that maybe we had outgrown our garage.

So in January of 2006 we opened up a market in the cute little yellow house in downtown Monument. Because this store had a kitchen we decided to start making family style meals with all of our natural foods. You can pre-order or just come in and see what’s available. We have 3 sizes of meals to help busy moms feed their families. You can enjoy more time with your family by letting us do the cooking for you.

Six months later Donna’s husband and all three kids came on board and still continue all working together today cooking, baking, delivering and whatever else needs to be done.

Who would have thought that back in 1997 this would have ever happened. Donna certainly had never dreamed of it. She just wanted good food for her lovely family. Join us at the store and see if this type of market suits your needs as well.

Come on in. We’d love to meet you and you don’t even have to come to my garage now. We’re open 5 days a week. Some of our original “garage customers” still laugh about the times we’d be working in freezing conditions, not being able to feel our toes because it was so cold. I think you’ll find the store much more warm now. Come to our “secret” location where you enter our store at the back of our kitchen facility. I must warn you though. The pleasant aromas coming from our kitchen make you very hungry when you shop  🙂