Ann Marie Sataline started the It’s Only Natural Market located at 386 Main Street. She considers the store, which sells a variety of vegetarian foods, vitamins, gifts and books, to be part of the alternative lifestyle community in Middletown.
KATHARINE HALL: How did It’s Only Natural get started and when?
ANN MARIE SATALINE: Basically, my son is 19 and it started when he is 3, so 16 years ago I used to go into a co-op that was in our old location. It was one of those things I walked in one day and I said, this is going to be my store some day. I was just convinced of that. And it took two years, but eventually the co-op went out of business and I took over the location. We were in business, my husband and I, we had a convenience store, but we didn’t eat any of the food, we didn’t smoke cigarettes. It just didn’t fit our lifestyle, and I wanted something that fit our lifestyle. And that’s why I started It’s Only Natural. And about six years ago we moved to this location.
KH: So where were you before that move?
AMS: We were down where Little Tibet is.
KH: So did you start the restaurant and the store?
AMS: No, they were always separately owned and operated.
KH: So did the store come first?
AMS: When it was a co-op there was a restaurant in there.
KH: Why do you think having this kind of store is important for Middletown? Has it done well here?
AMS: It has. We’ve done well. Just because I think health is important. For the same reasons I live this lifestyle, I think it is important for Middletown. I think a more natural, holistic approach to life is important. Everybody is living longer, but are they healthy? And I think it’s just the way to live life.
KH: Have you always had the same variety of items in your store that you have now?
AMS: We just started with the food and then my husband opened the bookstore part several years later.
KH: Has it been hard to get the right types of food in here?
AMS: The way it works is there is really only one huge supplier on the East Coast right now. It wasn’t always that way. It is United Natural Foods. No one else seems to be quite as big or quite as good. The smaller companies have gone under. So we get almost everything from them. And there are a lot of other smaller companies that we get different types of items from. The macrobiotics and all that type of stuff we get from one person. His orientation is very pure foods with over-the-counter sugars and that type of thing.
KH: Are you vegetarian yourself?
AMS: No. How I got started with this is because my son has horrible food allergies. He was actually allergic to so much, and I was a vegetarian when I had him, but he had to eat meat to get any protein at all, he was allergic to so many things. So meat came back into our diet. I don’t eat much. Mostly I eat fish.
KH: Do you have a lot of Wesleyan students come down here? Do you cater to students at all?
AMS: There are certain things we order, particularly in the bookstore, that we think students will like, or certain snack foods. It does come up in what we think about. I kind of consider, to use a food analogy, that students are the gravy because they are really only here on a temporary period. They are not the householders who are going to support me year after year after year. So yes we do cater to them but it isn’t quite as personal.
KH: Do a number of students come down to the store?
AMS: They do come down. On a nice day they’ll be down here around three o’clock. They come in waves, but I do notice.
KH: It looks like it has been really successful here.
AMS: It really has, and we really enjoy it.
KH: And it’s been a good response from the community?
AMS: Yeah, we have had a really good response. It’s unique I think. We’ve had a lot of interesting people come through here. We wish we had taken photographs of everybody when they started working here. That’s what I think about. The people who’ve worked for me and each of their unique stories. That’s one of the things I have to say. We enjoy it. We like the store, we like what we sell. We like each other. We have fun here. It’s a nice thing to be able to say that about what you do.
KH: It seems to be one of the unique stores in Middletown.
AMS: It used to have a really thriving macrobiotic center. That was kind of the cornerstone of this alternative lifestyle that came here. And then it just seemed to grow up here. You have places like the Buttonwood, which was across from our old store. We were all kind of down there together. When they founded the co-op, which was like 15 years before I started in this business, they got money for it because Richie Havens did a free concert. So there is a history to this community, and I’m sure a lot of it had to do with Wesleyan being a liberal minded university. Back when it started a lot of students worked in the restaurant and they were part of the co-op too.
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