With Jersey Jams and Frozen Yogurt, 'Alan's Orchard' Challenges the Organic Goliaths

For months they've been teasing local residents, promising "something good coming soon" all the while operating in secrecy behind closed doors on Quimby Street in Westfield.

What would it be? A store, a restaurant, some sort of top secret CIA front? The marketing campaign sent gossip flying from Tamaques Park to Mountain Avenue. Finally, this weekend, the store's owners dropped their cloak of secrecy.

Alan's Orchard opened last week as a small-scale version of a Whole Foods or a year round farmers market. Designed as a market for farms within a 150-mile radius of the store, Westfield owner Alan Weinberg and his partner, Mike Goldblatt, said they hope to reinvent food as a local organic concept.

"I wanted to have real food and know where it came from and that it was fresh," Weinberg said.

The store features a table of fresh seasonal produce, complemented by a display of cold items, including Jersey-made chicken sausage and buffalo meat on one side. The coolers also feature the latest fad in groceries: glass bottles of organic milk. Other displays include Jersey-made jams, bags of beans and other legumes, organic cheeses and whole wheat breads.

Weinberg takes particular pride in his store's fresh frozen yogurt, which is sugarless and lacks any added flavors. 

"Most make it with powder and water," he said. "It's tart and tastes like real yogurt. People seem to like it. It's not a flavor, it's yogurt."

Weinberg said he is providing various toppings for the yogurt, including fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. He hopes that the yogurt business becomes a booming part of his brand with teens and parents. 

Weinberg is a refugee from the world of public policy. As more and more consumers question the additives in the nation's food supply, he said, the time was ripe to promote local organic food.

Goldblatt, Weinberg's partner in the venture, said that customers with New York roots should recognize many of the farms from which Alan's Orchard buys it produce. "A lot of the vendors also serve the Union Square market in New York," Goldblatt said.

Weinberg said he calls vendors in the morning to place orders, and is told how long it will take to pick the order before being able to get it from farm to market. He said this is one place where he is hoping to stand out from others. 

A Westfield resident, Weinberg said he believes that the town is a great spot to open a store of this type. He said that many of the residents he speaks to are interested in farm fresh organic locally grown food and want to be able to know where the food came from. He said customers are happy to know that he and Goldblatt have visited many of the farms where the food is grown and have gotten to know the owners.

Going forward, Weinberg said he has other programs in mind for the store, including bringing in several of the farmers to meet with customers and providing some cooking classes or other informational programming on organic, locally grown food.

Weinberg said that while he is excited about finally opening the doors and looks forward to the store catching-on, he acknowledged that there remains one tedious task that he is still looking to avoid:

"Everything comes from a tree with no stickers," he said.