Fairweather wins health food category in Park City’s Best competition

Fairweather Natural Foods Store/Cafe wins top prize in Park City's Best. Photo: Michele Roepke

PARK CITY, Utah — At the Double Tree Hotel on Thursday night, the Best of Park City awards were announced. Fairweather Natural Foods came out on top in the category of health foods. It consistently has placed in the top three. This year though, it’s the winner of the custom plaque award, which will be proudly displayed in the store/cafe.

The store/cafe opened in 1992; however, Jen Rattray has owned and operated it since 1997. She got a job at Fairweather two months after it opened and was promoted to manager one year later. The store remains in its original location.

“There were other health food stores that tried and didn’t make it in the early years,” Rattray said.

Fairweather offers organic ingredients in its cafe’s freshly prepared breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. They specialize in vegan and gluten-free menu items, including smoothies, soups, and salads with dressings made from scratch. Almost every item on the cafe menu costs well within the single-digit range.

In addition to fresh produce, baked goods, and aisles and aisles of prepackaged grocery items, Fairweather is one of the only places in Park City where customers can conveniently walk in and purchase any of the store’s many shelves stocked with supplements.

Local purveyors of sustainable gourmet chocolate bars, different flavors of honey, and creative hot cocoa mixes for all ages are welcome to sell their products there.

Multiple moves had Rattray growing up in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Colorado, where she attended the University of Colorado Boulder. As one of her first jobs, on a temporary financial break from college, she worked for a couple in Princeton, NJ, who opened their own natural foods store/cafe, which inspired her as they made everything from scratch. 

Further influence came from her family, “I grew up with a mom who was not fine buying junk food, nowadays people would call that healthy, but back then, she just wasn’t into processed foods.” Her Park City family consists of her adult son Jackson, a graphic designer who works at a business just down the road, and his brother Bodie.

Fairweather is currently hiring, as she puts it, a good front-of-house person for weekend work. In the same sentence, though, she commented that “it is concerning that the lack of workforce housing in Park City not only affects my potential employee pool but the employment trends for the entire town.”

In regards to last night’s big win, Rattray, who seamlessly multitasked during the course of this interview, vacuuming, clearing cafe tables, and ringing up store customers, is thrilled and thankful.