Joe Hamilton: Pilgrim's pilot

There are plenty of stores where you can buy food. There are lots of places to buy supplements. There are many shops that offer select beers and wines.

But there is only one Pilgrim's Market.

"This is really the only store of this kind," said Joe Hamilton, founder and CEO.

What started in 1999 when he and wife Sarah purchased a small health food store, "A Trip To Bountiful" in Coeur d'Alene, has grown to become one of the area's most striking success stories.

Today, Pilgrim's fills 25,000 square at 1316 N. Fourth with organic produce, gourmet cheese, energy drinks and bars, beer and wine, bulk foods, and a meat and deli departments. One section is devoted entirely to supplements and is essentially a wellness center with staff ready to field questions and point people in the right direction toward a healthier lifestyle.

It prides itself in offering homegrown, natural products.

"We like what we do here," Hamilton says with a smile as he sits in his office set in a back room of the store.

Joe Hamilton, who grew up in Liberty Lake and graduated from Eastern Washington University with a degree in outdoor recreation, said Pilgrim's employs about 50 and has a payroll around the million dollar mark.

And Pilgrim's is not done.

"We see ourselves having multiple stores in this region," he said.

How did you get your start in this business?

My dad (Tom) was in the natural food business from the time I was born, really. He purchased a store in downtown Spokane, and at that time it was one of the oldest stores in the country. There were a handful of natural food stores in the country in 1965.

I was born in 1970 so that was five years before I was born. He worked in and grew a natural food business, all the way up until now.

In his prime, he probably had 15-20 stores. He had one of the largest granola manufacturing plants in the country. And then he had a plant down in Chico, Calif.

I worked for about a year to two years for my own company called Northwest Outdoors School. My dad, he kind of made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I worked for him for about five years, from about '94 to '99. He had five stores in Spokane at that time, vitamin stores, nutrition. This store in Coeur d'Alene became available for very little money, so my wife and I were able to purchase that. This store was much more eclectic. It had gourmet foods in it, it had produce. It was more of a food store. Increasingly, my time was spent over here. I still worked for my dad a little bit over the next few years, but kind of increasingly over here and decreasingly there. A year after that, we moved across the street, took a 4,000-square-foot space here. Couple years later we added 2,000 square feet, and another year and a half added another 2,000 feet and then about a year and a half after that we took over this big space where Liquidation World was. So now, it's about a total of 25,000 square feet.

Did you see the potential for growth early?

Yeah. I anticipate a lot more growth.

Why do you think the field of health food is growing?

People come to us for different reasons. One is they're ill and they feel if they look for a natural approach within supplements, which can really help acute health conditions, even diet can. Diet has single-handedly been shown many times to reverse heart disease, to reverse diabetes, and even type 2 diabetes, insulin-dependent diabetes.

So, you have people that shop for medical reasons. Then you get people who are foodies, who want better quality food. We carry a lot of foods that other stores don't, that would kind of be considered gourmet, I guess, although there are gourmet foods out there we don't carry, the ones that have objectionable ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup, artificial flavorings or sweeteners, MSG, trans fats. We don't allow any of those products in the store.

We have wine enthusiasts, beer enthusiasts.

You get people who are here for environmental, socio-economic reasons. They want to buy foods that are produced locally.

And all three of those things are growing.

How demanding is this field?

In every business, you always have to know what are the new products, what are people asking for, any business does that. This business is a real passion. You really feel good about what you're doing, and you generally believe you're doing a service to the community. You get that feedback all the time. We help people with serious health crises all the time. They come back, they're overjoyed and excited. That's really rewarding.

Because of the nature of what we do, and dealing with people's health, I've taken that very seriously. We've assembled a medical advisory board. We have MDs, PhDs, naturopaths who advise us on decisions, what we should and shouldn't do. We even went so far as to open a new business and call it the Pilgrim's Wellness Center. We have naturopathic doctors, acupuncturists, chiropractic, artery screening services, that's all right here. We have a naturopathic doctor on the floor with the same number of years as a medical doctor. He's on the floor answering people's questions for free. It's really equivalent to having a walk-in clinic where people can talk to a person for free.

We have an education center where we bring in national speakers. Depending on the month, we might have 8 to 12 different events, lecture seminars. We produce a 12-page circular every month.

How do you keep up with all your responsibilities?

I devote one day a week to be out of the office to work on the business itself. I study the financial aspects of the business and our strategies and so forth. I'm out of here so I don't get interrupted because there's always things to keep you busy.

I've been a big fan of small business development centers. I received some good counseling from the one in Spokane, and I received some good education from the one here as well.

What do you enjoy most?

I enjoy the service that we provide for the community and the customers. I really do enjoy kind of leading the team. I love seeing all of our employees develop and grow and become better at what they do and find the fulfillment that they find.

The great thing is, you're really doing a positive service and you sleep good at night.

What's been the biggest challenge?

Learning it from scratch, not having a larger corporation with decades of experience behind you. You're really pioneering in a sense. People have figured out how to run grocery stores before, but they don't really write books on it to tell you how to do it. So much of it, you figure out on your own.

There's a lot of systems we don't have set up yet. We have to create them as we go. So that's been a really fun process. I really love that. I love building a team of employees and to deliver something that is very unique.

Are you particular about what you eat?

Oh yeah. I take about 60 vitamins a day and then I try to do a green smoothie, where you take two-thirds green vegetables and one-third fruit, and put in water and blend that up. I try to drink 16-32 ounces of that a day. Of course, everything I eat is out of the store. My diet is primarily organic. I'm one of those people that don't eat gluten or dairy.

Do you find it's hard for people to change their diet?

Changing your diet is not an easy thing to do. But people are doing it more and more. Once they're in here, they're generally interested in considering making some changes. Once a person is ready to make a change, we have all the resources they need. We do cooking classes, we have naturopathic doctors, we have nutritional consultants, we have the educational center, we have 38 videos on YouTube of expert speakers. So once a person is ready, we're really trying to provide everything they need to make lifestyle changes.

Overall, would you say you're happy with the direction of Pilgrim's Market?

Yeah. We love working here. It's a lot of fun.