Hello and welcome to the Cornish health store online shop, My name is Karen Williams and here is a short history of my ownership of this establishment.
On the 6th January 1991, at the age of 14, I began working at Country Store health foods as a Saturday girl, earning £5 a day to stock and clean shelves. My interview with the owner, Sydney Bush, took all of 5 seconds. He saw me, said yes, and the rest is history. Without my realising, that ‘yes’ from Sydney began my love of health and helping others and changed the course of my life.
In 1997, Sydney was in his 80s, and wanted to sell the business; offering it to me. As the oldest running health food shop in Cornwall, having been open since the 1970s, I knew the shop to be a longstanding part of the community. I had also spent years learning about the industry and the business from Sydney. With this knowledge I took the leap, and at the age of just 20 I took on a mortgage and bought the business.