Innovation

The innovation of Cornucopia Foods is installed in two parts. The first part of the innovation is clear. Cornucopia Foods has been ahead of the general health foods and healthy lifestyle trend since 1980. The store has offered quality products before the idea of healthy, conscious consumption was popular. The organization stocks its shelves with the highest quality goods from packaged food, cleaning products, body care, makeup, produce, whole foods, and more. The store even produces and sells some of its own goods, like granola and chocolate products. Cornucopia Foods lives and breathes the mantra that healthy, clean, natural products are a way of life.

Bud Stockwell and his team are devoted to the well-being of their customers. This relates to the second part of the innovation. Any store can make conscious decisions to carry respectable merchandise from ethical brands. Not every store can offer the level of customer care that Cornucopia Foods offers. Employees have the training and knowledge to be able to discuss products and product ingredients in depth. They also have the ability to counsel customers about natural supplements, herbs, and the like. Stockwell states, “We educate people about it [products]. When they ask us why we don’t have ‘this product’, we then take that as an opportunity to educate them about GMO’s and other things.” Bud uses his store as a platform to inform customers of product and ingredient concerns to better their lifestyle, not his store’s profits, saying, “Just like I’m conscious of how the store spends its dollars, we educate consumers on how they spend their money, where their money goes.” Even on the store’s website you can find things called “health notes” or “food notes”, which are interactive resources for beneficial nutritional information.

Inspiration

Cornucopia Foods owner and creator Bud Stockwell has been passionate about not only food, but his local community of Western Massachusetts since the 1970's. Prior to opening Cornucopia Foods, Bud worked extremely hard to receive a federal grant, which was used to manage numerous food co-ops in local low-income neighborhoods. The goal was to help families ban together to overcome high food costs by purchasing in high quantities for discounted prices. Bud would go door-to-door and essentially make shopping lists consisting of produce, grains, and other foods to then purchase from local stores. Bud recalls, “I would go to the produce market at five o’clock in the morning with the list of things all the people in the neighborhood wanted to purchase”. In the late 1970’s Bud Stockwell went on to work at a large food co-op in Amherst, Massachusetts where he met his now wife. Within a few years, Bud and his wife left the co-op to open Cornucopia Foods, which Bud calls the transition a, “natural extension of the work with food I had already been doing for years”.

Overall impact

Cornucopia Foods is a scalable organization that has had a net-positive impact on the community, other local businesses, non-profit organizations, and consumers. The takeaway from the story of Cornucopia Foods does not stop at the positive impact the organization has had on local businesses, society, or the environment; or how a natural health foods store has been providing quality products and excellent customer service. The story of Bud Stockwell and Cornucopia Foods is a full-spectrum flourishing innovation because it is now shared with other universities, colleges, organizations, professors, and students around the World.

The overall impact of Cornucopia Foods began in the 1970's when Bud Stockwell realized he had a purpose. Bud was able to turn his passion of health food and improving the quality of life of others into a profitable business. “My goal was to change the world, and if I could do it through food, that was a good place to start. I think people underestimate their ability to make a difference in the world. They feel like they're just one person, ‘what can you do?’— and I don't subscribe to that belief”, states Stockwell.

Business benefit

When owner Bud Stockwell was asked how the innovation he has created impacted the overall business, Stockwell seemed puzzled and replied, “The innovation is my business. This is what we do.” The answer makes the impact clear: this business has one purpose, and that is to “do good”. The organization was founded with the principles of ethics, honesty, and trust. Cornucopia Foods is not in the retail industry, the food industry, or even the health industry. Cornucopia Foods is in the “do good” industry.

Social and environmental benefit

Purchasing products, produce, and food from local companies allows Cornucopia Foods to support other small businesses. Buying from these local vendors, farms, and companies assist in the development of the local economy by helping create jobs in the surrounding areas. “As a store owner, I try and stay involved in the community”, Bud says. Stockwell sits on the Board of Directors for the local Chamber of Commerce and has helped found the Downtown Northampton Association, which allows restaurants and retailers to band together to help maintain a vibrant downtown Northampton.

Cornucopia Foods has left its mark on the community in many different aspects, especially through donating generously to local organizations and coordinating different activities and events that encourage others to donate as well. The store also engages in many green practices by recycling and composting its own waste. Bud discusses how product packaging plays a big impact on what items are sold in Cornucopia Foods. “We try to support brands and products with the most environmentally friendly packaging”. In the store, there are giant plastic dispensaries for things like oats, granola, spices, and more that cuts down on individual packaged units for sale.

Interview

Bud Stockwell, Owner