First Coast Register October/November 2015 | Page 10

Brothers Austin and Justin
Stubblefield of Stubbees.

Native Sun Jacksonville Beach General Manager Richie Whitson
cuts the ribbon at the grand opening of the new store while
Jacksonville Beach Mayor Charlie Latham and Native Sun founder,
Aaron Gottlieb (far right) look on.
doesn’t have chemicals or is grown locally.
You’re originally from Jacksonville?
I was born and raised in the Southside area of Jacksonville. I was
here through high school. I went to Wolfson and Douglas Anderson
School of the Arts. I had Epstein-Barr virus from when I was very
young. I was tired all the time and doctors were telling me how to
cope with the virus and not telling me how to enrich my own lifestyle.
I didn’t really like that answer.
I moved to Atlanta to go to Emory University and while I was there,
I was exposed to so many different lifestyles. At the time, vegetarian
lifestyle was easy to do in Atlanta so I chose to go in that direction. I
lost 60 lbs but I was still eating the same foods – just meat-free at the
time. I decided to go vegan and see what that was like, and dropped
another 20 lbs. But what I really found was that was my energy levels
went up. I didn’t realize how much I was giving up with Epstein Barr
dragging me down and the foods I was choosing were just lowering
my energy.
Up there, I met farmers who explained to me that growing up they
had farms that were for the public, for grocery stores, and they had
gardens that their family ate off of because their parents wouldn’t let
them eat the chemicals that were on the food. It really resonated with
me. I decided to open up a restaurant in Atlanta and really focus on
clean foods. But I ended up coming back here to start looking for a
10 August - September 2015 | First Coast Register

job in natural foods – changed my plans a little bit, but we ended up
opening the first Native Sun in Mandarin. It was much smaller back
then in 1996.
I didn’t know that I was going to re-fall in love with Jacksonville.
Back then there wasn’t really organic groceries in town or natural
food groceries. People thought that it was really strange, what we
were trying to do.
Most supermarkets now have organic options. What draws
people to continue to come to Native Sun?
When we started -- if you had asked my wife or myself why we
opened up Native Sun, we would have told you we wanted to give
people access to foods that were healthful and gave them energy
and didn’t take away from their lifestyle. We said if organic food were
available worldwide or nationwide, even if it wasn’t at Native Sun’s
name, we would be excited. So the wish has come true — it’s available
everywhere. What’s funny, though, is that the definition has changed.
Most people were told that we had no standards — that we were
a self-regulating industry. But we were a self-regulating industry of
people who believed in what we did. We did not buy from people we
found were lying or cheating.
When the USDA got involved, they third-partied It out to the same
people who were monitoring before. But they changed the definitions
– they made it to where organic became a buzzword and marketing