Laura Sheehan’s full-circle health food journey

If you want to know why Full Circle Market’s Laura Sheehan launched her health food store, the answer is right in front of your eyes on the store’s logo: “Be kind to your­self and oth­ers, every­thing comes full circle.” 

She invent­ed that max­im as a tes­ta­ment to life lessons on her jour­ney from Eastern Kentucky University as a polit­i­cal sci­ence grad­u­ate to open­ing her store in the strip mall behind Winchester’s Kroger in June 2001. 

“I always knew I was going to do my own thing,” she says. “It turned out, this was it.” 

Laura attrib­ut­es the fact that “it” is a thriv­ing health food store today to the fact that she always shopped at health food stores and want­ed to pro­vide that same healthy expe­ri­ence for oth­ers. A two-year stint at Good Foods Co-op in Lexington solid­i­fied her resolve. She worked at the Co-op at a time when it was grow­ing and tran­si­tion­ing to their present loca­tion at Southland. That peri­od of inno­va­tion helped Laura learn the ropes of health food retail, where she had a hand (and brain) in the cre­at­ing of the Co-op’s café and juice bar. 

When Laura’s hus­band Craig land­ed a job at Clark County Health Department, they moved from Richmond to Winchester. Laura felt she had the chops to jump on the small busi­ness roller coaster. 

The ear­ly days were a tough go. For the first five years, Laura was a one-per­son oper­a­tion. When daugh­ter Barbara was born, that meant run­ning the store, being a mom, and putting din­ner on the table every night. All were full-time jobs. Laura lets out one of her ever-present laughs when look­ing back. 

“Those were hard times, but I was com­mit­ted to what I was doing,” she says. “I want­ed to be a ser­vice to my com­mu­ni­ty, so I was all in.” 

The com­mit­ment paid off, but not with­out chal­lenges. Three months after she opened, September 11 dark­ened Manhattan skies and America’s con­scious­ness. Laura is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly philo­soph­i­cal and prac­ti­cal about such shocks to the sys­tem of run­ning a small busi­ness in small town USA. 

The Great Recession of 2008 and the Covid Epidemic both dealt blows that wiped out many oth­ers. Laura kept going. 

“We strug­gled dur­ing Covid,” she explains. “My month­ly sales decreased 70 per­cent, but I fig­ured it out with gov­ern­ment grants (they didn’t sup­plant the entire dis­as­ter), and a line of cred­it, which I just paid off,” she says with anoth­er smile. 

Laura meets those kinds of chal­lenges with less dread and more ideas about how to dif­fer­en­ti­ate her store from gro­cery chains and the online mar­ket­place. Her move from behind Kroger to Colby Station Shopping Center was just such a scheme. 

“I am an active mem­ber of the Chamber of Commerce. It would be nice to be down­town,” Laura explains, “but foot traf­fic is a crit­i­cal part of my busi­ness. Here, peo­ple can park right out­side my store and come on in.” 

Laura believes it’s that cus­tomer-cen­tric think­ing that keeps Full Circle Market grow­ing. “I want peo­ple to walk into my store and not have to read labels to know that they are get­ting the health­i­est prod­ucts,” she says. “I have been read­ing labels for 25 years. People are final­ly start­ing to do it, too.” 

Full Circle Market has plen­ty of choic­es — more than 4,000 items from 100 indi­vid­ual ven­dors. Her shelves have every­thing from local hon­ey from hus­band Craig’s 100 hives, sup­ple­ments to sweets, spices and herbs, fresh bread, meats and eggs, and a “grab and go” fridge with fresh sal­ads and Laura’s award-win­ning beer cheese. 

Full Circle Market’s beer cheese embod­ies Laura’s approach to serv­ing her cus­tomers and Winchester. The cheesy spread has always been a fea­ture of Laura’s annu­al Derby par­ty. When Laura found out a col­lege friend who was vis­it­ing had celi­ac dis­ease, she embarked on a quest to make a total­ly gluten-free ver­sion. The result was a Beer Cheese Festival award win­ner, whole­sale anchor (avail­able at her old employ­er Good Foods and oth­er loca­tions) and a cus­tomer favorite. 

Thanks to state require­ments and Laura’s per­snick­ety insis­tence on qual­i­ty, Full Circle’s beer cheese is vet­ted to have 0.00 per­cent gluten by a Cincinnati lab. It’s also ten-months shelf-sta­ble accord­ing to University of Kentucky’s Food System Program’s grad stu­dents who test such things. 

Even though beer cheese is one of Laura’s fun­da­men­tal moves (some weeks she churns out 80 pounds of the stuff, and is get­ting ready to add the annu­al hol­i­day Fetaweizen, a cheese spread made with feta), she nev­er stops mon­i­tor­ing trends — from hemp to mush­rooms — because what is hot and what is not — can make or break a small business. 

“To keep grow­ing, you have to stay rel­e­vant,” Laura says. “I’m not the best cheer­leader for myself and things are mov­ing fast. But I am lucky to have loy­al cus­tomers, and that num­ber con­tin­ues to grow.” 

Laura plans to increase that momen­tum by bump­ing up her social media pres­ence and adding Door Dash deliv­ery and pick-up options to make shop­ping even more convenient. 

And how does Laura bal­ance the stress of run­ning her market? 

“I like to be out­side as much as pos­si­ble,” she explains. “I’m usu­al­ly in my gar­den by 6:30 in the morn­ing. I could prob­a­bly do more for myself, but I put most of my ener­gy back into the business.” 

In the 1920s, come­di­an Eddie Cantor quipped “it takes 20 years to be an overnight suc­cess.” Laura’s Full Circle Market is a tes­ta­ment to that real­i­ty, and the ener­gy it takes to suc­ceed. Years of heart­breaks and lucky breaks, and down­right hard work, con­tin­ue to bring the market’s healthy choic­es to Winchester. It’s good for us all that every­thing con­tin­ues to come full circle.