By JOSEPH KELLARD
Just ask customer Marilyn Fisher, who first walked into Jandi's when it originally occupied a small, narrow store in the Great Lincoln Shopping Center on Atlantic Avenue. Back then, Fisher ate the typical American diet of hamburgers, fries and soda, but sought remedies other than medicines to treat her rheumatoid arthritis-based health problems. She found herself returning for Jandi's juices and to pick owner Judy Chasser's knowledgeable brain on health techniques.
"What makes Jandi's unique is its ownership," Fisher says.
In her travels as a financial advisor from Great Neck to Melville to Huntington, Fisher stops by many health-food stores. "But there is no place like Jandi's," says the Rockville Centre resident. "It is the Mecca for people to get natural foods and the kind of resources so they can make good nutritional decisions."
In 1976, Judy and Irving Chasser of Island Park decided to work locally while raising their sons, Howard, 9, and Myles, 7. At first they considered opening a dessert shop with a healthy twist. But after a friend suggested a health-food store, fireworks went off in Judy's head.
"I knew nothing whatsoever about health foods," she recalls. "But I knew that was what I wanted to do."
The Chassers initially employed relatives in their 900-square-foot store. In addition to offering vitamins and supplements, they served soup and sandwiches out of their office and ground wheat grass into juice. "It's cleansing, detoxifying and gives you more energy," Judy says of the juice Jandi's pioneered on Long Island.
Customer Marion O'Shea of Rockville Centre was coming off surgery and wanted to eat healthier when she discovered Jandi's and gave its wheat grass juice a try. Since then, O'Shea says, Judy has helped her through a blood disease, cancer and osteoporosis. "I'm cancer-free now," O'Shea says, "and I feel it's due to Jandi's being there to help me."
When Jandi's first opened, people like Fisher and O'Shea were becoming more conscious about what they ate, and the Chassers watched the healthy-eating movement explode the following decade, when gyms and nutritional stores sprouted nationwide and people were substituting tofu and sprouts for hot dogs and sausages.
Following Jandi's initial success, customers demanded more and newer products and prepared foods. So, after Irving died in 1984, Judy moved a few doors down in the shopping center to a 1,700-square-foot unit by decade's end.
The second store featured an open kitchen and a food counter/juice bar, which proved an instant success and gave Jandi's a more intimate feel. "It was very homey," O'Shea recalls. "It was like family."
By the early 1990s, when both Chasser sons were working at the store full-time, health-food stores, like diet fads, had come and gone. But their store provided a blueprint on how such mom-and-pop operations could compete with the big boys like GNC, Trader Joe's, Vitamin Shoppe and similar chains that opened in Oceanside and surrounding towns as the health movement grew.
"We love to keep our customers healthy, and it makes us happy to do that," says Judy.
Florence Tannen of Baldwin, who has shopped at Jandi's for more than a decade, says the store is incomparable in terms of helping her with medical problems and the fresh dishes it serves. Asked why she thinks so many health enthusiasts flock to Judy, Tannen said without hesitation, "Number one, she listens carefully; two, she's very knowledgeable; and three, she uses kinesiology."
Jandi's growth throughout the '90s was such that the Chassers needed more space, and found it at 3000 Long Beach Road (and Mahland Place), where they opened a 5,800-square-foot supermarket-type store in October 2003.
Among the store's features are refrigerated and frozen foods; an all-organic produce department; an expanded deli, juice bar and bakery; groceries; a book section and a dining area. In expanding, however, the Chassers faced their greatest challenge: preserving the intimacy that made their smaller stores so popular.
"I wanted people to still feel like they were visiting us, rather than just shopping here," Judy says.
Thus, she and her sons were particular about each detail in their larger store, down to the warm lighting and wall coloring, the hardwood floors and enhanced sound system, which fills the store with classical, light jazz and New Age music.
Despite the moves and many fly-by-night diet fads, the Chassers held true to their philosophy, steering clear of jumping on the latest nutritional bandwagon and sticking to the roots of what they consider good health. "If someone grabs a product to buy," Howard explains, "Judy will literally take it out of the customer's hand if she thinks they really shouldn't be having that. That's unusual in the retail business."
Jandi's success is primarily two-fold, Howard believes. First, he points to the store's products, which are all vegetarian and almost entirely vegan and dairy-free (with the exception of soy cheese used in some dishes), wheat-free (except the bread used for sandwiches), yeast-free and refined sugar-free. An entire aisle is devoted to gluten-free products. "We really talk about nutrition and health here," Howard says. "And we're always looking to be on the cutting edge."
Moreover, Jandi's stresses customer service, from the nutritional information it provides, to going the extra mile to find a product, to employees' friendly smile. Wilma August, a nutritional specialist, has been with Jandi's the longest, since 1980. "Willy has a tremendous knowledge of food and nutrition," says Irene Rabinor, a Lido Beach resident, "and Judy, a tremendous knowledge of vitamins and supplements. They believe in what they do, and I have a lot of confidence in them."
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
