Founding father of Love Full Meals in Ormond Seaside, Port Orange, ‘lived the life he preached’

ORMOND BEACH — Mitchell Gross sales area, founding father of the Love Full Meals Cafe & Market outlets in Ormond Seaside and Port Orange, died unexpectedly of a sudden illness Sept. 23, his family confirmed.

“Mitch lived the life he preached,” talked about his widow, Paula Schandel. “We misplaced an unimaginable coronary coronary heart and an unimaginable gentle in our neighborhood.”

Gross sales area, 73, opened his first Love Full Meals retailer in The Trails Shopping for Center in Ormond Seaside in 1991 collectively together with his then-wife, the late Anita Gross sales area who died in 2006.

The couple have been former photojournalists who labored for the Hartford Courant newspaper in Hartford, Connecticut, earlier to shifting to the Daytona Seaside area.

Gross sales area who passed by the nickname “Mitch” moreover labored as a photojournalist for the Detroit Free Press. He grew up in Detroit and graduated from the Faculty of Michigan with a degree in good arts.

He left the journalism space when he obtained employed by Traveler’s Insurance coverage protection to vary into the company’s firm photographer. That job had him flying throughout the nation to take photos of catastrophes, along with fires, floods and areas damaged by hurricanes, along with assorted firm events.

Gross sales area and his first partner grew to change into followers of a pure meals retailer chain inside the New England area known as Bread & Circus. That impressed them to open Love Full Meals as soon as they moved to Florida.

The rising enterprise for the properly being meals retailer prompted the couple to relocate their Ormond Seaside retailer to its present location on the nook of Williamson Boulevard and Hand Avenue on Sept. 1, 2001.

A second location for Love Full Meals opened in Port Orange, near the intersection of Williamson and Taylor Road in 2011.

Mitchell Booth, center, celebrates the one-year anniversary of the Love Whole Foods Cafe &  Market at 1633 Taylor Road in Port Orange with two employees in October 2012.

Mitchell Gross sales area, coronary heart, celebrates the one-year anniversary of the Love Full Meals Cafe & Market at 1633 Taylor Road in Port Orange with two staff in October 2012.

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‘Spend cash in your properly being one chew at a time’

Gross sales area was happy with the reality that his outlets lived as a lot as their establish of offering actually full meals and wellness merchandise. “We’re the most important pure, contaminate-free, native family-owned full-service grocery retailer in Volusia-Flagler if you combine our two outlets,” he talked about in a 2019 interview.

Gross sales area’s passion for properly being meals and healthful dwelling was moreover evident in a single different interview he gave to The Info-Journal 4 years earlier. “Probably the greatest medical medical insurance is making certain your meals is the healthiest you could get. You spend cash in your properly being one chew at a time,” he talked about.

A method Love Full Meals differentiated itself from the huge grocery chains, Gross sales area talked about, was by standing by the principles he and his first partner established as soon as they began their enterprise.

These necessities, he talked about, included a dedication to solely promote pure and pure meals that’s free of “artificial elements and thriller components” and a willingness to substantiate to prospects “the integrity of our suppliers and (that) the meals we promote shouldn’t be going to be irradiated or bio-engineered.

“They (the huge grocery chains) are primarily about promoting and advertising and marketing and pushed by firm necessities, whereas we’re a neighborhood family-run enterprise, which has been investing not solely money into our communities’ colleges and native farms however as well as time and energy in educational seminars free to most of the people.”

‘Lived his life wanting to help of us’

Paula Schandel talked about of her husband, “He had crucial coronary coronary heart of anybody I might ever met. He lived his life wanting to help of us.”

Paula Schandel talked about the family-run enterprise will carry on, led by Gross sales area’s son, Mark Van Cleef, and daughter-in-law, Peggy Van Cleef.

“Remaining week, we misplaced an essential man and an essential good good friend,” talked about longtime good good friend and purchaser Jenni Craig, who was a childhood good good friend of Gross sales area’s daughter Capt. Laura Warner of Volusia County Seaside Safety Ocean Rescue.

Craig is among the many householders of Copper Bottom Craft Distillery in Holly Hill alongside collectively together with her husband and in-laws.

“Mitch was generous and kind, and his data healed so many lives in our neighborhood. I treasure the reminiscences and all of the issues he taught me.”

Together with Schandel, the Van Cleefs, and Warner, Mitchell Gross sales area will also be survived by his two sisters, Joannie and Julie Gross sales area, along with his and his partner’s son Paul Schandel, who works for Foundation Menace Companions. He is moreover survived by six grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, Paula Schandel talked about she and her family requests donations in Gross sales area’s memory to the Vietnam Veterans of Volusia County and the Tunnels to Towers Foundation. The latter is a nonprofit that offers mortgage-free properties to Gold Star and fallen first-responder households with youthful kids.

This textual content initially appeared on The Daytona Seaside Info-Journal: Mitchell Gross sales area, founding father of Love Full Meals in Ormond Seaside, dies