A Peek Inside Portland's Basics Market

When Chuck Eggert sketched the blueprint for Basics Market, he envisioned a small neighborhood hub, reminiscent of the grocery stores of the 1950s, where people could come to shop for simple, local ingredients and get advice on how to prepare them. As it happens, his recently opened Portland, Ore., store, blossomed into exactly what he had imagined.  As much as the layout and design, Eggert—who founded Pacific Foods, a leading producer of organic broth and soup, shelf-stable plant-based beverages and other meals and sides, which wasc acquired by The Campbell Soup Co. in December 2017 for $700 million in cash—relishes the “unique position” the sleek, compact format provides to test and experiment to see what works. “It’s easy for us to actually define what we are and what we aren’t,” he says.

Plans are underway for opening another Basics Market in Tualatin, Ore., in the near future. Eggert’s retail brainchild is anything but basic when it comes to experience and learning. The store hosts cooking demonstrations throughout the majority of its operating hours, with themes ranging from managing a diabetic diet—which proves useful for the patients visiting the attached medical facility—to helping shoppers become more comfortable with cutting up a whole chicken. “We’re trying to say, ‘Hey, buy a whole chicken. It’s going to be cheaper and can give you three meals out of it instead of one,’” he says, recalling how home economics was a routine part of the high school curriculum in days gone by. Ditto for “grandmothers who taught us how to cook, but much of that is now gone.”

The skills-based classes have been among the most popular of the store’s educational series, he says. Even when class is not in session, Basics Market’s in-store chefs and nutritionists are at the ready and eager to answer shoppers’ questions. For example, Eggert said one shopper came in and told the chef that his diet requires a dozen egg whites a day, and he was having trouble figuring out how to incorporate them. “They spent an hour just talking about [recipes] for salads” and other dishes, he says. “We’re trying to create an environment where people feel it’s safe to ask questions.”

With the kitchen on one end, the format features an open layout with clean sightlines that allow shoppers to see clear across the store. “I remember the phase where everybody went to black ceilings in stores and it felt like you were walking into a cave,” Eggert quips. “This is kind of the opposite.” The store also focuses on reducing food and packaging waste and avoids offering an extensive foodservice program for this reason. Accordingly, the Basics Market team is also working on using more recyclable jars and containers that it will encourage shoppers to reuse, and the store will soon switch to selling its milk in glass bottles.

To further help follow through with this mission, the store sources much of its fresh protein and dairy from its own farms. The only meat that is not raised by the Eggert family or other farms from the Pacific Foods days is the beef and duck, but even that is sourced from within 20 miles of the store. “In the case of the milk, we can actually tell you where the feed that the cow ate came from,” Eggert says. “We can tell you when she was born and where she’s been her whole life, and same with the poultry: We control everything from the egg on.”

Basics also has a small produce facility and rotates its offerings to what is in season. It is building a creamery in which people will be able to watch the cows being milked robotically and the cheese being made, and they’ll be able to track the products all the way to the store. As for loyalty programs and coupons, Basics stays true to its name and steers clear of them. “I find it annoying when you go someplace and they say, ‘Oh, you’re not part of our loyalty program, so you don’t get our special deal.’” Instead, Eggert says, “We’re creating the loyalty through the product. We don’t do coupons; we don’t do weekly specials. When we’re a part of a season where there’s an abundance, we try to emphasize that you can [be assured] you’re going to get the best price for the quality of the product.”