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TAOS — Lee Backer starts every morning at Cid’s Food Market by checking in with his employees, just like his parents did when they started the grocery store 40 years ago with a dream to sell organic foods in a small town they knew they’d never leave.

But whereas Cid and Betty Backer had just two employees when they opened on a shoestring budget in 1986, their son now manages over a dozen staff at a 13,500-square-foot store on the northern edge of town, Cid’s flagship location since 1998.

Before going upstairs to his office, he stops at the cashier stations, checks in with the produce, meat, supplements and prepared food departments, the back inventory and receiving areas — all the workstations and local workers that make Taos’ only full-sized natural grocer tick.

“How their weekend was, how things are going and what’s coming up” — these conversations take anywhere from 1-2 hours, Backer said, but his morning rounds are about to get a lot busier.

Backer and his wife, Angelica, Cid’s bookkeeper, recently broke ground on a second, 20,000-square-foot location on Taos’ south side. The new store is scheduled to open by May of next year, when the company embarks on its half-century mark.

“This was our third attempt at it,” Lee Backer said. “Now we’re on the cusp of what we consider to be our new flagship store.”

The supermarket under construction near the intersection of Paseo del Pueblo Sur and Paseo del Cañon East is not a replacement of the existing store — it’s a second, larger location meant to service what the Backers see as an under-tapped market on the south side of town.

The new store will feature larger produce, dairy and prepared food departments. It will also sport an island salad bar, juice and smoothie bar and pizza station. Backer said the layout will be designed to allow customers and staff to move about unconstrained.

“It really follows the modern grocery store model,” he said, “which is really focused around what we call ‘perimeter shopping.’ When the current store was built in the ‘90s, it didn’t have prepared foods, so it was more center-store focused.”

He said the natural foods shoppers expect at the current store will still be found at the new one.

“Natural food is a very generic term, but basically it means that all the products we sell are free of artificial ingredients,” Backer said. “That could be preservatives, flavors, colors, — any of that stuff — you’re not going to find it on our shelves.”

In the early 2000s, Cid’s formed a relationship with Veritable Vegetable, a California-based company that delivers three times per week. Other grocery items come from organic food distributor ����������ϼ� Natural Foods, which has locations in Denver, Colorado.

Organic cropland acreage increased 79% between 2011 and 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but most organic products are sold at conventional grocery retailers,

But Backer said being small and independent is an advantage, allowing him complete control over the foods he chooses to stock in his family’s store.

“We’ve been cutting edge on a lot of the trends,” Backer said. “We got rid of seed oils about a year and a half ago, which is a big deal because most salad dressings — oils, mayos, that kind of stuff — it’s all made from seed oils.”

Some research suggests that seed oils can be harmful to human health due to their high omega-6 fatty acid, which may have inflammatory effects. Meanwhile, 

While Backer opened a smaller, convenience-style location in Taos Ski Valley in 2021, he’s betting big that the new full-sized store will pay off.

That largely hinges on continued growth along Taos’ south side, where services tend to thin for nearby communities like Talpa, Llano Quemado and Ranchos de Taos.

“It’s been very exciting and we’re happy for them,” Betty Backer said. “There’s been so much growth on the south end of town, and Albertsons is the closest store. If you ever go out to the golf course, there are so many homes out there. I think it’s a great opportunity for them.”

The Cid’s team started drawing up plans for the new store in 2024. Even before then, they had conducted market research telling them there was ample room for another location. Aside from Albertsons, and toward the center of town, a Smith’s, Taos is home to a local food co-op, a Walmart and three dollar stores.

While Taos business owners say the town is no stranger to fly-by-night workers who come and go from tourist areas across the U.S., Lee Backer said finding good employees in Taos has never been a problem for Cid’s. He estimates that the new location will require 50-60 staff to run it.

“We have such a wonderful staff here at Cid’s,” he said. “I’m really excited for the opportunity of existing staff here to be move into higher positions, take on more responsibility.”

Mike Fernandez, for one, has been working in the grocery store’s meat department for more than 15 years.

“I like working here,” he said. “They treat us really good all the time.”

Evan Yee, a cashier on his second stint in Taos with a photography side hustle, has worked at Cid’s since August 2021. He said he has no plans to leave anytime soon.

“It's great to see people you know come by and say hi, and then you have opportunity to meet people in the town,” he said. “What I like about Taos is that it’s a fantastic collection of people who are interesting.”

Betty and Cid Backer launched the business a block away, next to Silva’s Tires, with some savings and a loan from Centinel Bank, which told them to expect a slow start, but the business grew quickly.

Cid Backer is still known around Taos as the voice of local radio ads, but he and his wife handed off the reins to their son around the time of the pandemic. Before he took over, Lee Backer put in his time at nearly every job in the building.

“I ended up being pretty good at it,” he said. “The employees all embraced me here at the store with open arms, kind of maybe seeing me at that time as their potential boss. That wasn’t necessarily my intention at the beginning, but everything kind of fell where it did, and here we are today.”

John Miller is the ����������ϼ�’s northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at jmiller@abqjournal.com.