Ellwood Thompson’s at 4 N. Thompson St. in Carytown. (Jack Jacobs photo)
Carytown fixture Ellwood Thompson’s is under new ownership.
The local specialty grocer has been purchased by Healthier Choices Management Corp., a Florida-based company that owns grocery stores under several different brands in Florida, New York and New Jersey.
The company announced the acquisition Monday. Terms weren’t disclosed. The Ellwood Thompson’s name is expected to remain in use and the store will stay in place at 4 N. Thompson St.
Ellwood Thompson’s now-former owner Rick Hood, who cofounded the store more than 30 years ago, said he was motivated to put the store on the market in order to retire.
Rick Hood
“I’m ready to retire and move on to something else. This is an excellent opportunity for fresh ideas and perspectives, bringing a different kind of energy to the store,” he said in an email Monday. “I’m retiring and looking forward to spending more time with my wife and grandchildren.”
Healthier Choices President and COO Christopher Santi said Ellwood Thompson’s is a strong addition to the company’s portfolio of similar stores.
“We look at a certain culture and a certain demographic of these stores. Rick has done a phenomenal job of stewarding this business for decades,” Santi said.
Healthier Choices’ other grocery brands are Ada’s Natural Market (Florida), Paradise Health & Nutrition (Florida), Mother Earth’s Storehouse (New York) and Green’s Natural Foods (New York and New Jersey). Ellwood Thompson’s is the company’s first store in Virginia.
In addition to maintaining the Ellwood Thompson’s branding, Santi said there weren’t plans to substantially change the store’s offerings, which include organic groceries and produce as well as products like vitamins and supplements.
Healthier Choices acquired the Ellwood Thompson’s brand, equipment and inventory in the deal that closed Monday. Santi said Healthier Choices doesn’t plan to relocate the store and a long-term lease on its current space is in place.
Ellwood Thompson’s leases a 17,000-square-foot space on Thompson St. It has 87 employees and Santi expected the team to largely stay put, though the acquisition is anticipated to create additional management roles that could shift some current workers out of the store. The store is planned to have local-level leadership under the new ownership.
“It’s our intent to remain consistent. Management will remain local,” he said.
Ellwood Thompson’s originally opened at 5600 Patterson Avenue in 1989 as City Market and later rebranded. The store moved to its current location in 1993.
Hood founded the store with Eric Walters. Hood had been the sole owner from 2005 until the sale of the company to Healthier Choices.
Over the years, Ellwood Thompson’s has expanded and then contracted its operations with ventures like a second location in Maryland that operated from 2012 until it closed in 2018, and a satellite café in a nearby storefront that closed in 2011 after a couple years of operation.
Santi said that although the Healthier Choices playbook calls for acquiring local specialty grocery stores and bringing them under one umbrella for more efficient operations, they wouldn’t close the door entirely on expanding the Ellwood Thompson’s brand again.
“If there was an opportunity to open a satellite or a version of Ellwood Thompson’s, we would look at it and analyze it like any business decision,” he said. “We like to buy existing businesses in markets and through economies of scale, we are able to run them better.”
Healthier Choices, a publicly traded company, also owns TheVitaminStore.com and Healthy Choice Wellness Centers in Florida and New York, according to its website. The company also sells vape products.
Ellwood Thompson’s isn’t the only small, local grocer brand to change hands recently. Good Foods Grocery in Bon Air was recently acquired by local nonprofit Commonwealth Autism to stand up a workforce training program for people with autism.
Ellwood Thompson’s at 4 N. Thompson St. in Carytown. (Jack Jacobs photo)
Carytown fixture Ellwood Thompson’s is under new ownership.
The local specialty grocer has been purchased by Healthier Choices Management Corp., a Florida-based company that owns grocery stores under several different brands in Florida, New York and New Jersey.
The company announced the acquisition Monday. Terms weren’t disclosed. The Ellwood Thompson’s name is expected to remain in use and the store will stay in place at 4 N. Thompson St.
Ellwood Thompson’s now-former owner Rick Hood, who cofounded the store more than 30 years ago, said he was motivated to put the store on the market in order to retire.
Rick Hood
“I’m ready to retire and move on to something else. This is an excellent opportunity for fresh ideas and perspectives, bringing a different kind of energy to the store,” he said in an email Monday. “I’m retiring and looking forward to spending more time with my wife and grandchildren.”
Healthier Choices President and COO Christopher Santi said Ellwood Thompson’s is a strong addition to the company’s portfolio of similar stores.
“We look at a certain culture and a certain demographic of these stores. Rick has done a phenomenal job of stewarding this business for decades,” Santi said.
Healthier Choices’ other grocery brands are Ada’s Natural Market (Florida), Paradise Health & Nutrition (Florida), Mother Earth’s Storehouse (New York) and Green’s Natural Foods (New York and New Jersey). Ellwood Thompson’s is the company’s first store in Virginia.
In addition to maintaining the Ellwood Thompson’s branding, Santi said there weren’t plans to substantially change the store’s offerings, which include organic groceries and produce as well as products like vitamins and supplements.
Healthier Choices acquired the Ellwood Thompson’s brand, equipment and inventory in the deal that closed Monday. Santi said Healthier Choices doesn’t plan to relocate the store and a long-term lease on its current space is in place.
Ellwood Thompson’s leases a 17,000-square-foot space on Thompson St. It has 87 employees and Santi expected the team to largely stay put, though the acquisition is anticipated to create additional management roles that could shift some current workers out of the store. The store is planned to have local-level leadership under the new ownership.
“It’s our intent to remain consistent. Management will remain local,” he said.
Ellwood Thompson’s originally opened at 5600 Patterson Avenue in 1989 as City Market and later rebranded. The store moved to its current location in 1993.
Hood founded the store with Eric Walters. Hood had been the sole owner from 2005 until the sale of the company to Healthier Choices.
Over the years, Ellwood Thompson’s has expanded and then contracted its operations with ventures like a second location in Maryland that operated from 2012 until it closed in 2018, and a satellite café in a nearby storefront that closed in 2011 after a couple years of operation.
Santi said that although the Healthier Choices playbook calls for acquiring local specialty grocery stores and bringing them under one umbrella for more efficient operations, they wouldn’t close the door entirely on expanding the Ellwood Thompson’s brand again.
“If there was an opportunity to open a satellite or a version of Ellwood Thompson’s, we would look at it and analyze it like any business decision,” he said. “We like to buy existing businesses in markets and through economies of scale, we are able to run them better.”
Healthier Choices, a publicly traded company, also owns TheVitaminStore.com and Healthy Choice Wellness Centers in Florida and New York, according to its website. The company also sells vape products.
Ellwood Thompson’s isn’t the only small, local grocer brand to change hands recently. Good Foods Grocery in Bon Air was recently acquired by local nonprofit Commonwealth Autism to stand up a workforce training program for people with autism.
Hope the new owners make a better effort to keep that store clean
Rick Hood picked up his game when Publix and Fresh Market came to the neighborhood. He’s turned ET into a terrific store and cafe. I wish him well in retirement.
Ellwood has not been the same since the pandemic. They got rid of the salad and raw bar and never brought it back. That was the only reason I made a special trip there.
Same. When I moved to Richmond I had to watch every cent due to professional school debt and though I loved ET it was not exactly cheap and since this was before the whole Craft Brew Insurgence it had the best variety of Pretty Expensive exotic beers (while Ukrops had none, I think) and I would buy just maybe one big expensive bottle to enjoy on a w/e with a friend. But as time went on, I was, as a non-vegetarian, quite proud that there was a health food store that had a high quality buffett-style freshly cooked YUMMY vegetarian… Read more »
Health food store that sells vape products well that is interesting….I wonder where the Nutrient drip bar and treatment center will go? Maybe they expand their Semaglutide (Ozempic) weight loss program to RVA. Those services are conveniently offered in store at Ada’s Markets.
That’s a good point that you are making, but I will make what is perhaps a partial counter-point — if you knew how bad even mild alcohol use has been proven to be, you would realize that people’s perceptions of unhealthy products are molded by the cultural slivers that they reside in. People think that Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Mormons and Muslims are kooks, but there is some truth to what they are admonishing sometimes, even if it is often for reasons that they are ignorant of. I remember a lot of the people who were proposing non-mainstream food… Read more »
Inhaling any smoked substance whether it liquid vape gas or nicotine or just burned wood in large quantities over your lifetime is NOT good for your lungs period.
What are your thoughts on edibles?
My thoughts on edibles are that they are safer in that there is no inhalation risk from either smoke or as MMD points out up there, from vaping, which has also shown to be not good for you — but I think there is still some debate about why/how much. Advantages of edibles are you are controlling the dose and they make those extremely, if not quite bespoke, if that is a good enough word for it — very precisely modulated to preference — like the production generally these days, you know what you are getting both regarding consistency and… Read more »
I believe in living a healthy lifestyle and proper nutrition,and what you do is your business,but I’m surprised the store is still open with the economy the way it is.I refuse to pay $10 for a bell pepper.
Yeah…. I never could justify buying a LOT of things there — at least at the Honest Weight or Greenstar food co-ops the prices were on par with supermarkets —- I usually thought the people buying there were buying a halo that I just either couldn’t see or refused to believe in. As someone who grew up with a LOT of small farms, I knew that small doesn’t necessarially mean better, esp since they get a lot less scrutiny from regulators. I rarely ever buy anything from Whole Foods either. I can afford to these days, but I’d like to… Read more »
Interesting you cite two food co-op examples from upstate NY. When I lived up there I did 90% of my grocery shopping at food co-ops, and then again in Knoxville, TN – so surprised there is not a large food co-op in the Richmond Area competing with the supermarkets.
It was attempted. They couldn’t raise enough money.
I owned a large 3 over 3 bldg that I bought abandoned in a ghetto that I ran as a quasi-communal living arrangement with other college students, and three of them were volunteer managers at Honest Weight — Honest Weight started eventually doing so well that one of the higher ups who stayed working for them after college and only moved out when he got married told me that the Whole Foods-type grocers actually were hesitant to move to NYS capital district because of the success of HWFCC — that has of course changed since then. The one in Ithaca… Read more »
Greenstar in Ithaca started as a food buying club called the Ithaca Real Food Coop. It grew from there to a storefront and eventually to what it is today. I agree about the availability of items in the mainstream supermarkets today but the real difference is the ownership model. Real coops are owned by membership. Perhaps that model is a non-starter here.
HEY WOW!!! You know your stuff! That makes sense, cause the smart, cautious way to build something like that is to start out as a club. Not sure how Honest Weight started — that and Greenstar’s early days are well before my time, but I do remember the old location of Honest Weight was a rather long and narrow space in a part of Albany that no one wanted to live in or even go to — depressing, boring, and dangerous at night. At some point, business was doing so well that they were able to get a new location… Read more »
Any word on what will happen to the office down the road? The round MCM building at Thompson and Floyd was featured in a Modern Richmond tour after it was converted and updated from a dentist / medical office to Ellwood’s management building.
The old doctor’s office in the round building inside looked like you walked onto a “Mad Men”set.60s, pretty cool.
I read in another article that it will be put up for sale separately. I believe it’s valued at around $800k.