<\/p>\n
Katie Wall did not plan on purchasing a business when she decided to visit a lifelong friend in Mancos.<\/p>\n
Wall had more travels planned after a life transition in her home state of Minnesota prompted her to leave.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had planned to travel abroad, maybe get down to Mexico, possibly down to Argentina,\u201d Wall said. \u201cI had some stuff that was floating out there as possibilities, and then I came to Mancos, and I didn\u2019t leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon after Wall arrived in town, previous owner Dustin Partridge approached her about the sale of his natural food store.<\/p>\n
Wall was the merchandising manager of a natural food co-op in Minnesota, and she has 11 years of farming background.<\/p>\n
Her immediate reaction to Dustin was a resounding no. She was sure this was not her path. However, after spending more time in Mancos, becoming acquainted with the people in the area and getting involved in the \u201cRosa belongs here\u201d campaign, her mind started to change.<\/p>\n
\u201cDustin was going to close November 1st, regardless of whether he had a buyer or not and that was a huge motivator,\u201d Wall said. \u201cI kind of just felt like things kind of got clear for me around my former life, and I realized I probably wasn\u2019t going back to Minnesota and it just seemed right. I had an offer I couldn\u2019t refuse, and I really fell in love with the town of Mancos.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wall called Partridge the next morning and told him she would buy Zuma from him.<\/p>\n
Wall took over Zuma Natural Foods on Nov. 1. \u201cThere will definitely be significant changes, but it will happen gradually over time,\u201d Wall said. \u201cWe are planning to do a grand reopening sometime this winter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Changes at Zuma may include a \u201cgrab and go\u201d system of food at the cafe and more locally sourced foods.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith my background in farming, I definitely want to figure out how to support local food,\u201d Wall said. \u201cWe have a great basis with Montezuma Farm to School, and there are some really great local, organic farmers in the area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wall said that the Mancos community has shown her great support in her endeavor to fill Partridge\u2019s shoes.<\/p>\n
\u201cFolks are really excited, and I have a lot of people that will just come in to meet me or to hang out in the space,\u201d Wall said. \u201cI have really felt supported, and I am really grateful not only to the community but to the staff who have been incredibly generous with their knowledge, experience and their time and energy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
provides a nice place to land for Minnesota transplant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,28,83,29,3270],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-76053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-newsletter","tag-organic-foods"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76053"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=76053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}