'Bee Natural' Creates Local Buzz About Fresh, Healthy Food

More than a decade ago, Wendy Sinko was a nurse working in the Lehigh Valley who wondered if there wasn’t a way for health to be improved for her patients, her family and her friends.

Then she married, started a family in Center Valley and began to worry even more. Were they eating too much red meat? Was there too much starch in their diet? What about microwaving foods?

So she left nursing and eventually opened "Bee Natural," a health food store in at 21 N. Main St. in Coopersburg to provide raw dairy foods, gluten-free foods, grass-fed beef and organic chicken, among others. It employs one full-time person and one part-time person.

To top things off, Sinko founded the Coopersburg Farmers Market, now in the parking lot next to her store. Hours are 3:30pm to 7pm on Thursdays for 20 weeks. The season began May 26.

In its third year, the market has grown, she said, from one vendor to
nine, overtaking the traditional Lehigh Growers Farmers Market at Route 309 and Landis Lane in Coopersburg. The growers market has struggled due to road construction.

Q: Why the interest in health foods?

Sinko: It was how I was raised. I spent an awful lot of time with my
grandparents and looked at how they used to eat and how we eat now. They weren’t on a bunch of medications and didn’t have all these illnesses. They lived well into their 90s and they were pretty healthy until the end.


Q: How did you learn to eat healthy?

Sinko: I didn’t take any type of courses. Our average meal starts with
salads. We do eat meat, we’re not vegetarians. My kids love fish. I try to limit red meat. We eat a lot of chicken. We’re Pennsylvania Dutch, so we’re used to meat and potatoes. So I do try to cut down on some of the starches.

Q: After the kids became old enough for you to explore the health food industry, how did you land in Coopersburg and its Village Center strip mall?

Sinko: I wanted to stay in the Center Valley-Coopersburg area because I felt it was lacking in health food stores. When I opened this in 2008, I also opened the Fitness Studio next door, so I needed enough parking for this and the Fitness Studio. But between the studio, the store and the farmers market opened in 2009, I was overwhelmed. So something had to go. The sale of the Fitness Studio worked out by dumb luck.

Q: Who are some of your vendors at the Farmers Market?

Sinko: Returnees are Wash Tyme Soaps in Perkasie, Balasia in Hereford and Ladybug Gardens in Coopersburg. New ones we can list include Willow Haven Farm in New Tripoli, Inside Scoop in Coopersburg, Rolling Pin Pastries of Kintnersville, Baker Street Bakeshop in Center Valley, Ridge Valley Farm in Sumneytown and Twin Maple Farms in Quarryville (Lancaster County).

Q: What is new this year at the market?

Sinko: We have a community space each week, such as Animals in Distress, a no-kill animal shelter from Coopersburg; the Southern Lehigh Library selling tickets for their garden tour, or a food bank for the Coopersburg Historical Society.

We will have live music or a free seminar each of our 20 weeks we’re open.

This year the Chamber of Commerce has come in, taken us under their wing as far as [the] Coopersburg Business Revitalization Program, which gave me seed money [the amount was undisclosed].

Yes, I’m hoping it benefits my business, but I’m hoping it benefits all of downtown. Lets face it, downtown Coopersburg is maybe three or four blocks. I get no compensation. Whatever I have left at the end of the season, half goes back to the CBRP.