Oak Street Natural Market

 

"My girlfriend and I packed the car the next night, quit school, we're in a Corvair convertible, never been out of the midwest, landed in Greenwich Village, can't find a place to stay, sleep in the car for a week," Worobec laughs as he tells the story.  "My poor parents!"

 

Worobec was working temp jobs when he saw a Broadway casting call for the musical Pippin.  He and "500 other guys" showed up, prepared to sing a one-minute audition piece, receive the cursory "thank you," and be shooed off the stage.  While Worobec was waiting in line, he had no idea that telling about his audition decades later would get him a bank loan for a natural products store in Bozeman, Montana.

 

"I sang my one-minute's worth and, in my mind, I thought it was over," Worobec says.  "No one said stop.  I sang the whole song all the way through.  I finished the song and it was like that moment of total quiet.  I'm standing there and a person appears out of the darkness and steps up to the foot of the stage."

 

That person was legendary director Bob Fosse, who told Worobec that he was "really good" and that, although he wasn't right for Pippin, Fosse would get Worobec work.  He did.  Worobec was quietly cast in Jesus Christ Superstar and then in Godspell. He was in his early 20's and performing on Broadway, but he wasn't happy.

 

"I didn't feel fulfilled," Worobec says.  So after three years, he quit.

 

He first moved to Minneapolis and then to southern California, where he taught drama and communications skills for more than ten years at a Montessori junior and senior high school.  He was still singing and acting in the evenings, and it was dinner theatre that brought him together with the woman he'd marry and with whom he's own two natural products market in Montana.  Worobec and Terry, a classically trained singer with a background in opera, sang love duets in a musical revue ten years ago.

 

We did it for three seasons.  The first season, I fell in love with her, but she wasn't in love with me.  The second season, I wasn't in love with her, and she fell in love with me," Worobec smiles.  "The third season, we finally got it right.  We finally were together."

 

They ended up leaving Los Angeles because, after visiting friends in Livingston and performing around Montana, they decided that this is where they wanted to be.  But what Worobec wanted more than anything at that point in his life was to feel better.

 

"My health in my 40's was extremely poor...I couldn't eat, I had no energy, I had migraine headaches all the time.  I was very, very ill," the 50-year-old Worobec says in his high-energy, quick-speaking manner.  "I knew of health foods, but I wasn't any big aficionado.  If I could, I'd buy something healthy, but I grew up in the midwest -- dairy, sweets, that's our diet.  When I was performing in New York, I lived on fast food and sugar and thought that would give me a boost of energy.

 

"I started looking into alternate therapies when the medical establishment couldn't help me.  After going through a massive amount of tests for tens of thousands of dollars, they said, 'There's absolutely nothing wrong with you.'  I'm sitting on the curb outside the clinic with my head in my hands, my whole body is on fire, hurting.  I sat there and wept and I said, 'there's got to be something -- some answer to this.'"

It just so happened that Worobec was working in a friend's health food store in Livingston and the combination of eating healthier foods, taking vitamins and herbs, and working with health practioners helped him fight what the cause of his illness was determined to be: a toxicity that came from using dangerous chemicals while doing work sealing cement floors years earlier.

 

Worobec worked in the health food store by day and did two-person shows with his wife by night at the Blue Slipper Theatre in Livingston, and then performing Broadway songs and scenes at Charlie's in Bozeman for three years in the 90's.

 

It was in the mid-90's when his theatre skills served him well again when his friend was selilng the Livingston health food store.  Worobec wanted to buy it, but had no idea how to go about it.  He called a businessman friend in New York and literally asked him for a script.  "He said, 'Robert, you go to him and say, 'Henry, I want to buy this store. I know you're shopping it around, I want right of first refusal to buy this store, here's 10K in earnest money in cash to show I mean business, and I'd like an answer back within the week.'  I said, 'That's great, Anthony, except I don't have 10K.' ...  He said, 'I'll wire it to you.'  A total angel, a total angel," Worobec says, shaking his head.

 

Worobec followed the script and got the store.  A few years later, when he and Terry had decided to open a second store, they chose Bozeman's growing west side.  He put on a suit and tie, and with his business plan in hand, met with a banker he's never dealt with before.  When the banker asked about his background, Worobec admitted that it was, for the most part, in theatre, no retail -- and told the story of quitting school and going to New York.

 

"His eyes light up," Worobec says of the banker.  "He says, 'We're the same age.  When I was in banking school, my secret wish was to get in a car with my girlfriend and go to New York and be a performer.'  He said, 'I'm gonna give you your loan because I love the way you tell your story.'"  Worobec beams.  "I had to call my folks that night and say, 'Guess what? My big mouth finally paid off.  I got the loan for the business!'"

 

The 4,800-square-foot Oak Street Natural Market has been open since December 2000.  "We intend to have the strongest supplement section in town, in terms of the support that we have in what we call our pharmacopoeia -- products and herbals and tinctures for natural health.  We use that as the center of our store, the heart of our store.

 

"The other strong point is our natural express deli ... No one's home to cook anymore, yet peple want to feel like they're nurturing their families and themselves.  So the answer is they want fast food, but they want great-tasting, natural food.  We offer full meals in the evening.  You get a vegetarian meal, we have honey-glazed rotisserie Hutterite chickens every day, incredible made-from-scratch desserts, two soups eery day -- one vegetarian, one not."