A business owner of one of Bristol’s longest-running health food shops has decided to retire this year. Mike Abrahams, 79, co-founded Wild Oats in Redland more than four decades ago, a business that pioneered many services that are now widespread in wholefood stores today.
Leeds-born Mike was working at the European Space Agency in Holland with his partner (later wife), Loes, when he decided to set up his own wholefood shop in Bristol. It was the early 1980s when interest in vegetarianism and clean eating was almost non-existent.
“Being into natural foods at the time was virtually unheard of, it was very ‘cranky’,” Mike said. He remembered a shop in London called Cranks that became very famous for its vegetarian food.
