Healthy food wholesaler delivers to Goldendale - Goldendale Sentinel

Despite run-ins with county officials over weed spraying, Azure Standard continues to thrive and provide drops in Goldendale—and a lot of other places—for individuals to order healthy foods.

Azure Standard is an organic farm near Moro, Oregon that also operates a mail order business. Their catalog and website offer a plethora of organic foods, supplements, and beauty products at very reasonable prices. Once purchased, one’s order is drop shipped to a local address every other week, where the buyer can pick it up. There is a residential drop here in Goldendale.

David Stelzer founded and still runs Azure Standard along with his family. He began by selling his organic grain to a nearby big-box store. When he lost that contract, Stelzer says he thought, “Somebody’s buying this grain, so who can I sell this to?” He began selling rye and wheat directly, a pickup truck-load at a time, to smaller stores and directly to consumers. When his customers began asking for other products such as organic lentils, he sourced the items, stored them, and resold at a slight markup.

Many of his customers, who knew he was driving into Portland, would give him a shopping list of items to pick-up and deliver along with their orders. Eventually he began adding a small markup and made popular items available to all his customers. These early shopping lists became the basis for his first catalog in 1988.

From his small start, Stelzer has grown Azure Standard into the third largest organic foods distributer in the U.S. Azure delivers to drop points throughout the country as far east as Pittsburg and Florida. Additionally, they operate barge lines that deliver to Alaska, Hawaii, the South Pacific, and the Caribbean.

By growing much of his own product, selling it directly to customers, bulk sales, and minimal packaging, Azure keeps prices for organics competitive with national brands. Stelzer asserts that if one is willing to cook, they can eat organic, non-GMO food for less than they would spend in a standard grocery store. He states that his mission is to support families.

U.S. consumers buy 4 percent more organic than is produced in the US. Because the U.S. produces only slightly more than half of the organic food consumers purchase, demand makes opportunity for fraud and accounts for the higher markup on organics. To ensure that his product is wholesome, Stelzer maintains close relationships with his vendors.

Stelzer knows the vast majority of the 500 organic farmers and vendors he buys from. Stelzer asserts that to earn the trust of customers, he must make sure he uses trustworthy vendors. “It is my job to know my vendors, It’s all about relationships.” They must agree not to sell products to Azure that contain substances on the Unacceptable Ingredients List. The list includes GMOs, artificial coloring and flavoring, and Monosodium Glutamate, to name a few. Stelzer states that he’s diligent about verifying his vendors organic certification too.

Stelzer fiercely protects organic certification on his family farm as well. In 2017, Sherman County Commissioners threatened to obtain a court order to spray his fields with herbicide to control weeds. This would have decertified his fields and crops. What began as a contentious battle between Azure, neighboring farmers, and Sherman County Commissioners has been settled through a social media campaign in support of Azure, better communication, education, and bio control of noxious weeds that eliminates the need for spraying.

Stelzer reports he is eager to “keep the peace” and that his relationship with neighbors and the Sherman County Weed Control District has greatly Improved. As Stelzer says, “It’s all about relationships.”

You can shop for Azure Standard products at http://www.azurestandard.com.

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