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Wrestler Turned Health Food Entrepreneur Celebrates 40th Anniversary

Posted: Jun 15th 2013 By: CMBurnham

It was 1973 when Len Rossi, a former professional wrestler who had a healthy lifestyle epiphany, set up shop in a little town just south of Nashville after reading a newspaper ad to rent a small retail space on Church Street, around where the Judge Bean?s BBQ is today.

At the time, there wasn?t a whole lot of business to speak of in Brentwood, save for Huff?s Grocery and Nobles Corner, much less a health food store.

?When we moved out here there were no malls, no shopping centers.? Rossi said. ?Concord Road was a little two-lane country road.?

Now on the heels of his 40-year anniversary as the proprietor of Len Rossi Health Foods Store, the 83-year-old business owner looks around and notices that Huff?s and Nobles are long gone. His is one of the very few that still survive from those days.

Rossi?s store, which sells healthy foods, vitamins and supplements and provides therapeutic massage, natural healing techniques and holistic advice, has moved a few times during the intervening years. It was one of the first storefronts in the Brentwood Place Shopping Center before moving out farther about 16 years ago to a little house on Franklin Road, just north of the Moores Lane intersection. He shares the space in a ?mini-mall? with Pellet Grills and More and Mark Bates Landscaping.

'Quackery' goes mainstream

?Back then, we were considered weirdos and quacks,? Rossi said. ?Back then, nobody had heard of this stuff, so we were one of the health food pioneers in this area. Now even the big guys are in on this business.?

Rossi was one of those people who didn?t put much stock in healthy living, even though he was a world-famous professional wrestler. But it took major injures suffered in a 1972 car accident ? which effectively ended his career in entertainment ? to get the wheels turning in his mind.

?I had two children to raise,? he said. ?I was drinking heavily. And now, I had severe medical problems. But you know, God works in strange ways.?

He was scheduled for colon surgery when his doctor gave him another alternative.

?He said, ?You don?t have to have this surgery. You don?t have a life-threatening disease. You can fix this with just medicine and diet.? That?s when God walked into the room,? Rossi remembered.

Study and certification

That led Rossi to totally change the course of his life. He studied nutrition at Belmont and took study courses based out of England and Colorado.

Today, the shop competes against those ?big guys? by selling nutraceuticals, nutritional supplements that can be sold only through professional health food stores. Rossi is also a licensed certified massage therapist and reflexologist and holds a naturopathic degree. His wife, Jeanie, who has a master?s degree in microbiology, is working on fine tuning a mail order version of the store and does computerized health screenings and assessments.

On top of that, clients and customers learn what to eat, the proper use of exercise and spiritual belief.

?We offer a lot of caring, knowledgeable, scientifically-proven advice with a personal touch.? Rossi said.

In 2004, Rossi was inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame by winning the Senator Hugh Farley Award, which involves community service rather than just resting on past wrestling laurels. For him, that means helping people live longer, healthier, more productive lives.

Len Rossi Health Foods Store is also unique in that it survives as a locally owned independent business in an increasingly corporate world.

?Those little mom and pops ? the hardware stores, the shoe makers, the butchers ? they?re all going away,? he said. ?But I plan to stay as long as I possibly can and one day, we hope, our grandson can take it over, if he wants to do it.?