Rainbow Whole Foods Co-op wants to save its place in Jackson business, community history

It began as an an informal bulk food-buying club among a dozen or so people in 1978, was formally chartered as a cooperative in 1980, and within a few years saw its membership grow into the thousands.

It was called Rainbow Whole Foods Co-op, and for more than 40 years it became known as one of Jackson's most celebrated and unusual businesses.

Now, former members, employees and supporters of the co-op, which closed under financial pressure in 2020, are making efforts to ensure the unique story of Rainbow is not lost to future generations.

Daniel Johnson, a former board member and vice president of the cooperative, is helping to spearhead the project. He said with passing years Rainbow’s storied history was increasingly being forgotten, and he wanted to do something to preserve those memories.

Gathering documentation

So Johnson and some friends began compiling whatever documents, photographs, oral histories, signs, T-shirts and other memorabilia they could find. They then approached the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to see if the state institution would consider creating a section to preserve Rainbow’s history.

There the group found enthusiastic support from MDAH Acquisitions and Collections Coordinator Laura Anne Heller. Heller said she remembers going to Rainbow as a young customer. “It was the cool place to be,” she said, characterizing it as a “countercultural organization that was uniquely started by Mississippians.”

Johnson and Heller met with several other ex-Rainbow members on a recent Saturday morning at the William F. Winter Archives and History Building to look over what has thus far been collected and discuss what additional items are still needed.

“I am hopeful that if someone one day wants to tell our story there will be enough materials here,” Johnson said.

Rainbow's roots

Rainbow’s roots began inside a small building on Palmyra Street called the Alexandrian Center, which at the time also offered classes in yoga, dream interpretation, and meditation. When the center closed in 1979, the small group moved their food-buying club to the basement of the former YWCA building (now the Old Capitol Inn) on State Street.

Within another year the group quickly outgrew that space and in 1980 moved into a wooden structure behind a convenience store at North West Street and Ridgeway Street. There, they officially organized as an agriculture cooperative and opened their doors to the public for the first time.

From the start the co-op became known for items not readily available in Jackson’s more conventional grocery stores. You could, for example, find dried seaweed, Japanese pasta and bottled strawberry juice. But the main focus was always on bulk foods, ranging from dried beans to flours, seeds, nuts and herbs. And all items sold were organically grown without chemical fertilizers, pesticides, preservatives or additives.

Membership prices were set at $15 a year for individuals or $20 for families, and members were offered discounted purchase prices, invitations to annual co-op picnics, and the chance to influence co-op policy, among other perks.

The ramshackle building off North West Street (which had been pieced together by adjoining two old portable classroom structures) lacked visibility and soon proved not to be the best location. (It later became home to Jackson’s fabled nightspot W.C. Don’s.)

So, by 1981 the group was in search of a new, more permanent home. They found it at 4147 Northview Drive, behind what was for years known as “The Dutch Bar.”

It was here that Rainbow really began to flourish, and in January, 1982, they expanded by opening a restaurant next door called the “High Noon Cafe.”

Don Potts, who was among the visitors Saturday at the Winter Building, said he and his wife Becky were the first cooks for High Noon.

Longtime manager Blue King said in 1990 that Rainbow’s reputation for being countercultural wasn’t entirely off base.

“The whole co-op concept was foreign. They thought we were communist at the least. I’m sure a few years ago they thought everyone was an ex-hippie breast feeding in the aisle,” King told the Clarion Ledger.

Coming to fruition

But by 1990 with 10 years under their belt as a successful enterprise, Rainbow board member Fletcher Cox said the group was also appealing to more mainstream families. “The main thing is that the more people who eat healthy foods, the better shape the world is in,” Cox said in the same interview.

The Rainbow location most people are likely to remember today, at 2807 Old Canton Road, opened in 1998. It had been built in 1928 as an A&P Supermarket and at the time roughly tripled the size of Rainbow’s footprint.

For the next 20 years Rainbow and the High Noon Cafe became major anchors for Jackson’s burgeoning Fondren Business District. Membership and customer traffic reached a peak. But problems also developed.

Located dead center at the bottom of three large hills to the north, west and south, flooding at the new location became a frequent problem, especially after the city approved additional construction in the area.

In 2014 supporters of the co-op appeared before the Jackson City Council seeking relief. By that time the store had experienced major flash floods at least 18 times since 2001, resulting in over $500,000 in losses.

Smaller floods happened even more often, said store manager Patrick Jerome. “At one point we were having four or five a year,” he said.

Although then-Mayor Tony Yarber and councilmembers promised to do what they could, the problems for Rainbow mounted. Between flooding, limited parking, increasing land values in Fondren and the opening of Whole Foods in Highland Village, the days of Rainbow seemed numbered.

Rainbow's end

Johnson downplayed whatever affect the opening of Whole Foods had on Rainbow’s demise and blamed it more on the other factors. “My memory is that Rainbow didn’t actually experience a drop-off in revenue once Whole Foods opened. Rather, I think it helped increase interest in that segment of grocery shopping,” he said.

But the financial pressures eventually became too severe. In July 2018, after two bankruptcies, Rainbow’s Fondren store said its final goodbye. A brief scaled-down revival was attempted the following year at Northpark Mall in Ridgeland, but it proved short-lived, lasting for only about six months between September 2019 and February 2020.

Nevertheless, for many who worked and shopped at Rainbow, the memories remain. For them, Rainbow was not just a store, it was a community.

Thomas Kersen, a Jackson State University sociology professor and author of “Where Misfits Fit: Counterculture and Influence in the Ozarks” (2021, University Press of Mississippi), was among the participants gathered at the Winter Building on that recent Saturday.

Kersen said he is currently working on a new book that will explore countercultural movements in Mississippi and Alabama, and that he plans a chapter specifically about alternative cuisines. He said the working title of his new book is “Magnolia Misfits” and he believes the wealth of material gathered about Rainbow will benefit his research.

In addition to being digitized, all materials collected by MDAH will be professionally stored and preserved in the institution’s lower level “stacks,” which maintain a constant temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit with a relative humidity of 40%.

Anyone who has materials or stories about Rainbow they would like to contribute to the archive should contact Laura Heller by email at lheller@mdah.ms.gov or call 601-576-6889.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Jackson, MS, Rainbow Co-op was a pioneer in whole foods movement in city.