Like all good stories, ours started in a small juice bar and cafe in Rozelle. The year was 1996; tie-dye was in fashion, and we were juicing up a storm on the mean streets of the Inner West.

Sisters Jodie Stewart and Tammie Phillips had previously held corporate jobs that involved a lot of travel, jet lag, and food choices based on convenience.

As part of their travels, they both lived in Japan for a while and loved the delicious diet over there. This is when they first started to genuinely comprehend the relationship between nutritious food and longevity and quality of life.

They also experienced the relatively new idea of the wholefood store and started thinking about how they could take these concepts back to Australia, not just as a cafe but as a whole new way of eating, a genuine alternative to the traditional supermarkets.

They'd recently come back to Australia from overseas, bursting with ideas about the delicious wholefoods they had enjoyed on their travels. Perhaps it was influenced by the tie-dye, but the natural food revolution was about to begin. So, back to that small cafe in Rozelle (and we mean really small - barely enough room to swing a blender).

It was going well, with a growing customer base and the tastiest food around, but they wanted to do more. What if they could expand their healthy little empire, into an entire wholefoods supermarket? Over 20 years later, that's precisely what they've done. Out with the nasties, chemicals and weird 'food-based products' of conventional supermarkets, and in with the natural, ethical groceries that won't break the bank or leave a large footprint.

In short, they wanted to give you, the good people of Australia, a grocery shop you could feel really bloody good about. A one-stop shop so healthy and full of goodness, it could turn oranges green.

WE GREW APART ORGANICALLY
We knew from the start that our relationship with conventional supermarkets just didn't feel right. We needed to make a clean break and start fresh. There's no easy way to say this, but we found a better way. Supermarket food was just too complex, saying one thing but really meaning another. We wanted food that was more honest and simple. Supermarkets talked a big game and were always there when we needed them, but it always felt as if there something was hidden, something we weren't being told.

We had a feeling in the pit of our stomachs that it just wasn't going to work out. So, we found a better way to shop. We put our energy and passion into finding food we can trust to bring a smile to our faces every day. And now we have a food relationship that makes the world a better place. Our food relationship promise:

No artificial preservatives
No artificial sweeteners
No artificial flavours
No artificial colours
No hydrogenated oils
No antibiotics or growth hormones in our fresh meat, seafood or dairy
No bleached flour
No more complexity, just simplicity and goodness. We’re glowing. We're pretty damn serious about keeping our food promise, but welcome your help to keep us on the straight and narrow path to wholesome goodness. So, if you see something at About Life that doesn’t meet our promise, tell us and we'll give it the 'Gloria Gaynor' treatment. You'll get a $50 Gift Card, and we'll tell that product to go, walk out the door, just turn around now, cos it's not welcome in our store. Just send us the details, with a photo of the product and we’ll do all the dirty work!

ABOUT LIFE TODAY
We’ve expanded our healthy little empire, now with seven stores in Sydney and one in Port Melbourne, offering entire supermarkets dedicated to wholefoods, complete with cafes and self-serve food bars. Plus, our Sydney-wide catering bursts with the flavour of naturally grown goodness. Over 20 years on and we still proudly remain independently owned and operated.

The founding principle of About Life has never changed: no food complexity, just simplicity and goodness. ‘Food as medicine’ remains one of the cornerstone philosophies. Everything that has been built stems from this core belief and is the guiding principle in all our decisions; from the people we work with to the way we market ourselves. As the business has grown our interests have expanded to encompass a range of environmental and social issues, which is reflected through our product offering, and provides a spot at the table for everyone.