Local food-only convenience store opens in Sebastopol

Sebastopol’s Susan Butler has built what she calls a “healthy, local food-only convenience store” — from the ground up.

She’s a general contractor who renovated Victorian and other period homes in Washington, D.C., and British Columbia, before constructing the 120-square foot Locastore at 1830 Gravenstein Highway S. in Sebastopol in the summer of 2013.

The store, which also has a 120-square-foot porch, opened Dec. 8.

Butler, 64, financed the project with $12,152 from a Kickstarter campaign and a $50,000 Small Business Administration loan.

The store’s fresh produce comes from her own garden and those of five Sonoma County farmers. A dozen Sonoma County suppliers provide nonproduce food that needs no refrigeration — Locastore has no electricity — including beef jerky, artisan bread, vinegar, juice, honey, hot sauce and evaporated milk. It also carries cloth shopping bags and unique clocks.

Butler’s business venture began when she sold her home-grown produce outside the Hard Core Coffee store on Gravenstein Highway South.

“The vegetables were selling like hotcakes, and I decided to set up a produce stand,” she said.

“I had two choices: be a mobile food facility, which required an agreement with a restaurant to store my food, or a brick and mortar business. I said, I’ll be brick and mortar. The whole cost of the store was $85,000.”

Butler owns the building but has an eight-year renewable lease and pays rent to the landowner, John Kolling, owner and operator of Apple Seed Farms.

“I try to make it easy for people to launch their dream,” said Kolling who sells apple products and models his business endeavor after the folk hero John Chapman, also known as Johnny Appleseed, who planted orchards throughout the Midwest in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Butler said county officials have identified “food deserts” west of Stony Point Road and east of Highway 12 in which “low-income residents do not have easy access to grocery stores.”

Her dream includes eventually offering franchises for Locastores that could be located in parking lots at churches, schools, parks and other facilities, she said. Three or four people have expressed interest in franchises that would cost $125,000 and include the structure.

Butler’s store doesn’t compete with farmers markets, she said, because they are open only one day a week. “We want to be open dawn to dusk all year. We’re currently open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week.

“The purpose is to boost the local food system, help people become self-employed and keep that money in the county,” she said.

Visit Locastore at 1830 Gravenstein Highway South, Sebastopol, locastore.net.