Conscious Choice: Organic Food for Everyone

August 2001

Organic Food for Everyone

Natural Needs Plants Seeds of Healthy Eating

by Ross Thompson

Sonya and Eddie Kugler have a simple plan: get everyone in America eating organic food. They’ve been working at it, one way or another, since the late seventies. Now, more than twenty years on, they’re as optimistic as ever that they will succeed.

"I’m not about preaching to the choir. I want to get these organic products into every home across America. It will take open, inclusive action to do that. It also takes collaboration, drive, and determination. I think I will see it in my lifetime," says Sonya with radiant self-confidence.

Eddie enthusiastically agrees. "It’s our dream of a clean world in which healthy people eat pure food," he says, quoting the slogan of the Kuglers’ organic food promotion company, Natural Needs, Inc. "We’re a one-of-a-kind service company that specializes in direct consumer marketing to get the message out," he adds.

This September 4, Natural Needs will set up several booths on the plaza of the James Thompson Center in downtown Chicago to provide organic food samples, cooking demonstrations, and a variety of organic foods that can be purchased at substantially reduced introductory prices. It’s their twelfth annual Organic Farmers’ Market and Food Festival, staged in celebration of Organic Harvest Month, as September has been designated since 1992 by the Organic Trade Association.

In conjunction with this year’s event Eddie plans to coordinate an Organic Sale-A-Thon "in as many retail outlets of organic food as possible." Natural Needs will provide advertising and public relations support to help get the word out. Sonya adds, "We are working with retail stores to create a smooth promotional organic package targeting their potential organic customer. Samples, coupons, map guides, celebrations, and more make the sale-a-thon an attractive doorway into organics."

Meanwhile, Sonya will take their message to the children at Indian Trail Elementary School in Highland Park (district 112) by presenting an Organic Sample-A-Thon there. "We did a school-wide tasting/sampling of organic foods during Earth Month. The children loved it, learned from it, and were able to take outreach information, coupons, and samples of organic foods home to their family," says Sonya. The school project has Eddie excited as well. "The schools are where the information and sampling need to be, and Natural Needs is trying to do its best to make it possible," he says.

Sonya got the school to start thinking organically when she began the Organic Garden Project in 2000. "Now in its second year, the garden has been integrated into several aspects of the curriculum, including physical education," says Sonya. "The school also embraced the garden by introducing vermicomposting to the children. Every‘waste-free’ Wednesday the children compost their lunchroom organic waste into the wormie bin we set up, and that compost goes into the school garden." The choice of Indian Trail was a simple one; it’s where the Kugler children, Owen and Lillian, go to school. Sonya says, "It is my way of giving something of great worth back to my own hometown school community."

Sonya’s three older children, Simone Platt, Eli Platt, and Nora Platt, also attended Indian Trail in their elementary years. Now in college, Simone helped out with the garden project last year. "I have been teaching better food choices and doing cooking demonstrations with my children at their schools for almost twenty years," says Sonya. "It is extremely important to bring this knowledge to children at an early age. Our goals as a family and for Natural Needs are very similar. At home we are dedicated to a clean environment. We eat a clean, organic, vegetarian diet, we recycle most of our waste, and grow a garden," says Sonya. "My house is‘home’ to many interesting people, artists, philosophers, friends. We talk about the planet and life and hope for the future."

Ed’s Sprout Shop

Ed Kugler got started as a natural food entrepreneur in 1977 when he set up a booth at the second Renaissance Faire in Wisconsin to sell homemade fruit tarts. He met a sprout and wheatgrass farmer at the fair and later visited the man’s greenhouse in Winona, Minnesota. Ed was hooked. "I grew sprouts for the next four years," he says, and was the first to supply organic sprouts to area farmers’ markets. He soon opened Ed’s Sprout Shop and Co-op in Highwood. It was "the only natural foods eatery and juice bar on the North Shore."

Eddie’s home — and the home of his many endeavors — has always been Highland Park, Illinois. He grew up there and went to Highland Park High School with Sonya Dagovitz. Ed and Sonya were friends in high school, and they shared an interest in vegetarianism. They lost touch after graduation; Eddie headed off to the University of Michigan, and Sonya went to Shimer College.

After graduating from college, Sonya took a seasonal job with the U.S. Forest Service in Aspen, Colorado and started the first recycling center at remote campgrounds in White River National Forest. Eventually, she moved back to Highland Park, married her high school sweetheart, and had three children. She ran into her old friend Ed Kugler when, in search of healthy and organic foods, she found Ed’s Sprout Shop. She joined the co-op, and after some time, took over the job of running it. Sonya had experience in the business; she had started a co-op while at Shimer College and found it an effective way to get good, fresh food at better prices.

Although the Sprout Shop closed in 1983, the shop’s co-op is still going strong. It’s one of many activities at the Kugler’s Highland Park home. As the largest host/member drop site for Angelic Organics, a community supported agriculture farm in Caledonia, Illinois, the Kuglers also see around forty-five CSA shareholders each week during the growing season.

Early Needs

Eddie incorporated Natural Needs in 1983. Sonya was involved from the beginning as a part of the "brain trust," providing ideas and consulting with Eddie as the mission of the company was identified and refined. The company started out as a mail order provider of organic and natural products for infants and children. In 1988, Sonya became the official General Manager of Natural Needs, and they began to plan the first of many natural foods festivals.

Between those two dates, the community around natural foods grew, in part because Eddie and several other like-minded folks had formed the Chicago Vegetarian Society to "bring people together socially to have fun and enjoy one another’s company." Eddie also was using Natural Needs to organize and promote "Natural Foods Dancefests." The concept, Eddie says, "was to allow people a non-smoking, organic/natural menu of food from local restaurants and dancing for a low cost." In other words, a healthy alternative to the typical smoke-filled dance club. That may sound a little tame, but don’t kid yourself, these people know how to party. Sonya, especially, is able to release much of her boundless energy on the dance floor.

Sonya’s energy has been a clear benefit to Natural Needs, which on August 5 and 6 of 1989 began its commitment to educating the general public about natural and organic foods. They took a booth at the North Halsted Market Street Fair to present "A Taste of Health." They created games for fairgoers to play at the booth, and gave out natural foods, gift certificates, and merchandise as prizes.

A month later Eddie and Sonya took their business partnership to a new level by getting married. Sonya’s first marriage had ended a couple years earlier and Eddie had come to realize that the life partner he had been seeking for so many years was his longtime friend and natural foods comrade.

Shortly after the wedding the Kuglers opened an all-organic food store in Highland Park. Sonya managed the store, even after little Owen came on the scene in 1990. The store continued along with the increasing activities of Natural Needs until Lillian, their second child, was conceived in 1992. This was too much even for the energetic Sonya, so the Kuglers decided to close the store and concentrate on events.

Earth Day Comes Alive

The twentieth anniversary of Earth Day was a significant event for Natural Needs. Eddie and Sonya got involved with the planning group early on and managed to coordinate more than twenty vegetarian and natural food vendors to help feed the 150,000 or so people who came to Lincoln Park that sunny spring day.

They stayed involved as the renewed environmental interest kept Earth Day better attended in the nineties than it had been in the eighties. Five years later they did five days for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Earth Day. Eddie calls it "a true test of endurance. The first day was sunny and in the seventies, the remaining four days it was rainy, windy, and cold." Undaunted, they have made Earth Day a major Natural Needs event every year since but have kept the celebration to a single day on or near Earth Day. The past two years Natural Needs participated in the official Chicago Earth Day celebration in addition to hosting their own event at the James Thompson Center on a different day in April.

Natural Needs also planned and produced the Earth Day gala dinners in 1990 and 1995 that featured Earth Day founder Denis Hayes (1990) and Senator Gaylord Nelson (1995), the legislator who made Earth Day a nationally-recognized event.

Natural Needs at Farm Aid

Another accomplishment came in 1997 when Farm Aid organizers moved the annual fund-raising concert from Austin, Texas, to Tinley Park, Illinois, a mere two weeks before the event. "We got a call from Paul Sturgis at Goodness Greeness that Farm Aid needed some organic/natural food for the backstage catering. We acquired over $8,000 of food from over fifty manufacturers willing to help out," recounts Eddie. "Neil Young talked onstage about our Organic Food Pavilion and the importance of organic farming to millions of people that day."

The following year Farm Aid returned to Tinley Park and, with more advance notice, Natural Needs was able to get donations of organic foods from more than eighty manufacturers. They were allowed to sell food to the public this time, but the booth was not in a good traffic area and sales were minimal. The overcast and cold, rainy weather didn’t help. When Farm Aid moved the concert to Bristow, Virginia in 1999 and 2000, Eddie remained involved, although at a reduced level. This September 29 Farm Aid will present the concert in the Indianapolis area and Natural Needs will again coordinate backstage food donations from the organic/natural food industry.

But Natural Needs does not restrict its food service to large-scale events. The company also has catered a number of other gatherings over the years, including many of the parties and cruises hosted by this magazine.

Other Venues

The Kuglers will go just about anywhere to spread the organic gospel in any way they can. In 1995 Mothers and Others for a Livable Planet hired Sonya as field representative for their "shoppers campaign for better food choices." Sonya says, "It was a fabulously successful integration of organic food products into conventional supermarkets. Here in Chicagoland we worked with Dominick’s Finer Foods while they launched their‘fresh stores’ concept. We were able to create many bridges to organic foods for the average American consumer."

In June, 1999, Natural Needs hosted the first organic food booth at Chicago’s annual Blues Fest, the largest city-sponsored music event. They didn’t make money but Eddie called it "a great experience."

This year the Kuglers were sponsors and organizers of the first annual board of directors Booze and Schmooze at the Upper Midwest Farming Conference (I told you they know how to party). This thirteen-year-old event presented by Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Services (M.O.S.E.S.) is the most heavily attended organic farming conference in the country.

Sonya also sits on the board of directors of Sustain, The Environmental Information Group; she serves as president of the Chicago Vegetarian Society and vice-president of M.O.S.E.S.; and she sits on the marketing committee of the Organic Trade Association and chairs their Organic Harvest Month task force.

In addition to his work with Natural Needs, Eddie has spent varying amounts of time since 1973 helping out in his family’s commercial office building and window cleaning business. Since the work offers beautiful city vistas from the tops of some of Chicago’s major high-rises, it often allows him to practice his other passion, photography. Eddie has extensively chronicled in pictures most of Natural Needs’ endeavors and has been photographing natural food stores around the country and in travels abroad since the early seventies.

The Kuglers are partners with Mickey Hornick, Jo Kaucher, and others, in the Highland Park location of the Chicago Diner. The Chicago Diner in Highland Park has been open for five years, and it does a good business with health-minded North Shore folks. The restaurant also has a wholesale bakery and caters or otherwise participates in many events. They specialize, of course, in plant-based whole foods.

Fertilizing Young Minds

Sonya’s Indian Trail Organic Garden Project began last year with the students planting seeds in the classrooms. Later, the southwest corner of the school playground was converted to a garden. The entire school has the opportunity to participate in the garden activities. In addition to scheduled class time in the garden, students can spend their recess or lunch breaks gardening. During the summer, older students from district 112 schools can participate, along with district 112 summer students. In summer sessions food is harvested and a fall garden is planted for returning students to tend and harvest. Some of the harvested food gets used in summer school cooking classes while the rest goes to those who help in the garden and to Abbott House, a nearby nursing home and intermediate health care facility.

On April 30, 2001 Natural Needs displayed and provided samples of more than 200 different organic and natural foods for more than 400 children at Indian Trail School. It’s all part of their "simple" plan to get America eating organic foods. If you can reach them when they’re young, the Kuglers reason, they can enjoy many more years of healthy food choices. And kids are very effective at bringing new ideas to the attention of their parents, who might not otherwise be exposed to them. The main message for the students is that food comes from the Earth, not from the store.

Planting the Seeds

The Organic Sale-A-Thon in stores and the Organic Sample-A-Thon in schools are the two projects that Eddie is most excited about these days. Sonya is excited that "Natural Needs is working to create models that teach organic gardening and making better food choices in the public school system."

Eddie likes to point out that "how you spend your money daily has an awful lot to do with how our environment stays healthy. Buy organic or natural products. Make the right choice," he exhorts. "Sustainable, organic, natural, Earth-friendly, regional, local, seasonal — let your spending help the Earth. People need encouragement to try something new," adds Eddie. "That’s why Natural Needs continues to do the‘planting of the seeds’ in the mouths and minds of thousands of people per event." Eddie and Sonya want to give you a taste of healthier food grown in harmony with the planet. Here’s their offer: Have a free sample. Buy some foods to try at home — cheap. Then go to your local food store and vote with your dollars until organic foods are the only foods available on the planet.

Natural Needs presents their Twelfth Annual Organic Farmers’ Market and Food Festival on Tuesday, September 4, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm on the plaza of the James Thompson Center, corner of Clark and Randolph Streets, Chicago. For more information call Ed Kugler at 847-763-2045.

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