When he moved to Salem, Alex Beamer was used to driving 60 miles to buy tofu. Beamer had been living deep in Oregon’s Cascades at Breitenbush Hot Springs, which he founded as an intentional community in 1977. The original residents cooked communally, often making the drive to Salem to find natural and organic foods at small specialty stores. By 1991, Beamer made the move “down the hill” to Salem so his kids could attend a larger school district. Three years later, he opened LifeSource Natural Foods as a small grocery store in south Salem. “Where we’re worried about taking care of the environment, taking care of each other, the health of ourselves and our community — natural foods is a place that touches on all those things,” he said. He didn’t imagine 30 years later he’d be leading an organization of 70 employees that sells thousands of products across 20,000 square feet of retail space. As the grocery industry has consolidated and organic foods have gone mainstream, LifeSource is a rarity: it remains solely owned by Beamer’s company and operates the single location on 2469 Commercial Street S.E. where the store opened in 1994. LifeSource will celebrate its 30th anniversary on Saturday, Oct. 5, with a Fall Festival running from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. It will feature barbecue, free samples, live music and 20% discounts all day on regular-price items. The store has survived and thrived when few independent grocers remain in business. Homegrown chain Roth’s sold to a Canadian retailer in 2021, and most other Salem grocery retailers are part of large national chains. In its early days, LifeSource occupied a smaller part of its current building. It’s since expanded four times, most recently in 2021, when it took over the space formerly occupied by Party Mart and doubled its footprint. Alex Beamer, founder and president of LifeSource Natural Foods, poses outside the store on Southeast Commercial Street. The store is celebrating its 30th anniversary in October 2024. (Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter) When LifeSource first opened, the market for natural and organic foods was smaller and more specialized than today. The store’s main competition was small natural food stores, like the Heliotrope Natural Foods which operated in Salem from the 1970s to 1990s. Beamer said LifeSource stood out by its focus on customer experience. He wanted it to look like a retail grocery store, not a funky do-it-yourself operation. “We focused on being very organized, really well structured, having a beautiful store, abundant selection. The product was really well displayed,” he said. Beamer grew up in Oakland, California, and moved to Oregon in 1968 to attend Reed College in Portland, where he studied biology and liberal arts. He founded Breitenbush hoping to build a community where people could live better lives. The hope was to be “more loving, less conflicting, have a lighter footprint on the earth by sharing resources, living more simply,” he said. “My goal was to be a model that other people would recognize as being a better way to live.” In 1983, he briefly moved to Hawaii and entered the grocery industry, purchasing Ke’eau Natural Foods and running it. He later sold the business to his longtime store manager. After returning to Breitenbush in 1986, Beamer said he found aspects of communal living challenging. An introvert, he struggled with the expectation to constantly attend meetings and social functions, and the lengthy decision-making processes. That influenced his choice to move to Salem. Founding LifeSource was a way to live his values differently, he said. He said he’s always worked to make decisions with input from employees, but in running a business, he could shape the store’s culture and vision. That doesn’t mean Beamer always has final say. He values cooperative decision making and said it’s been good for the business. LifeSource employees wear name tags with just their first name. Beamer is no exception: his clip-on tag reads simply “Alex,” with no mention of his title or role in the company. Otherwise, the store has no uniform — a decision that came from employees. “I would say, personally, I think it’s great if everybody wore an apron, and you can easily identify they worked here,” he said. “The team didn’t like to, so it was always a push and they won.” To stay relevant as large stores now tout vegan cheese and organic apples, Beamer said LifeSource has focused on local foods and maintained its strict quality standards for what they sell. “There’s people that are on special diets and because of our good selection and high quality standards, they can rely on us to have a good selection of products they want,” he said. Such diets, like vegan and gluten-free, have grown significantly since the store opened. LifeSource uses its shelf tags to mark products so it’s easy to see at a glance if something is gluten-free, local or vegan. Sales data and customer requests drive which products are stocked. Beamer said in years past, the Dr. Oz show was a reliable driver of demand for new supplements. “The customers would tell us, within days: ‘We want raspberry ketones, ‘and we’d go, ‘What the heck are raspberry ketones?’” The store over the years has tried to stay involved in the Salem community. Customers receive a credit for bringing their own bags, which they can donate to a local charity. In August, the effort raised $754 for the Northwest Hub, a nonprofit bicycle repair and job training shop. Beamer initially retired in March 2020 and moved to Cottage Grove soon after. He came back in 2023 as president to strengthen the store’s leadership as it confronted the aftereffects of the pandemic and a challenging economy. He now commutes into Salem on Tuesdays. He said he has a succession plan for LifeSource eventually, but isn’t yet ready to discuss it publicly. He said he didn’t think the store would last so long when he opened it. “The store feels very grown up and mature, and it’s exciting,” he said. “I love it. Hoping for many more years.” Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241. A MOMENT MORE, PLEASE– If you found this story useful, consider subscribing to Salem Reporter if you don’t already. Work such as this, done by local professionals, depends on community support from subscribers. Please take a moment and sign up now – easy and secure: SUBSCRIBE. The post From humble beginnings, LifeSource’s founder built a small natural foods empire in Salem appeared first on Salem Reporter.