Bringing Farm Fresh Food to Lutherville

Good news for health and sustainability enthusiasts: A MOM's Organic Market is coming to Lutherville.

Scheduled to open in the spring at Yorkridge Shopping Center, nearly every aspect of the store will reflect environmentally friendly food shopping.

"We're more organic than just about anybody," said Scott Nash, MOM's owner and founder in an interview with Patch. He said his local chain is a cross between Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, except with higher organic standards and lower prices. 

To reach MOM's shelves, all produce must be certified as organic by the USDA. Likewise, the company's stores sell only sustainable seafood, provide receptacles for recycling, use green building materials and power its stores and central office with wind power.

Disposable bottled water isn't even sold in MOM's stores.

Originally, MOM's was an acronym for My Organic Market, although the store now fully embraces its maternal connotation, Nash said.

"A lot of moms come in every week to buy food for their families," he said. "Also, I started the company out of my mom's garage. The name works for a lot of reasons."

Purists may complain that not all of MOM's products are grown or manufactured locally.  "It's not like we live in California," said Nash. "The local season is fairly short here and while we sell a ton of local produce, we can only sell it for three or four months a year."

It can also be challenging, Nash said, to find local farmers who sell at competitive prices and comply with his strict organic standards.

Nash realized a need for opening a MOM's in Lutherville after the chain won Best Organic Grocer from Baltimore Magazine in 2008. At the time, Baltimore area customers had to drive to Columbia to find the nearest store.

The new store will become the chain's seventh location in Maryland and Virginia. Nash opened his first retail store in Rockville in 1996, but he started it as a mail order company a decade earlier with only $100 when he was 22.

The 11,000 square foot space in Lutherville will be located in the Yorkridge Shopping Center, at the corner of York and Ridgely Roads.

According to Nash, this location will create approximately 50 jobs and generate between $6 million and $11 million in annual revenue, though he hopes the new store will exceed expectations.

"I'm a show-me guy," he said. "Let's open it up and see what happens."

In addition to competing with regular grocery stores, MOM's must compete with farmers markets and even home-based gardens.

"(They) may reduce some of our sales, but we don't even really notice and in some ways we don't mind it," said Nash. "When local growers and super markets do well, we all do well."