Sundance’s mission, crafted by Sundance’s staff in 1986 in response to a leadership crisis, is “Individuals nourishing community nourishing individuals.” This mission has remained salient and useful for 40 years, underscoring our food standards, and our interactions with each other and the community. This mission underpins the core values that guide our thoughts, words and actions.
Gavin McComas, who came to Sundance in 1983, helped develop and fully embraced this mission. He was Sundance’s owner and General Manager until October 18, 2023, when he gave Sundance (Grocery, Kitchen and Wine Cellar) to the community as a Perpetual Purpose Trust, making it a permanent community asset that can never be sold.
Gavin remained General Manager until his death on November 25, 2025. By extrapolating and codifying the values implied by our mission statement, Gavin ensured that Sundance will be able to guide itself wholly and righteously into an uncertain future.
These core values are:
Geborgenheit refers to the feeling of being safely nested in a cozy place where we can relax and be ourselves. We strive to make every customer, vender and staff member feel at home and at ease. Reciprocity is, of course, the core of the Golden Rule, doing unto others as we wish to be done by. This applies to how we treat every person we interact with, each other, ourselves, the community, the world. We experience comradery by working and playing together, by supporting each other, by acknowledging each other as whole persons, by acting reciprocally rather than transactionally. And we experience eudaemonia when we achieve happiness by working towards the common good. It feels good to build community, build up each other, and do work that supports our values. We nourish, we flourish.
Critical to Nourishing Our Community is having product standards that reflect our values.
Sundance Natural Foods is a traditional, independent natural foods store emphasizing whole, minimally processed, organic food. Sundance is a “ product driven” store and not an “industry driven” or “market-driven” store. We put more value on the integrity of the product than on the opportunity to make more money on products that may be popular or trendy, but less healthy or sustainable.
We focus on providing organic whole grains and whole foods that have a high nutritional value. We guard against genetically modified ingredients, petrochemical fertilizers, synthetic herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, etc. We also guard against harmful or unnecessary ingredients like trans-fats, artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives, unnecessary sugars, and non-naturally occurring flavor enhancers like added MSG.
We look for packaging that has the lowest carbon footprint. This means we support packaging that can be reused, recycled or is a nontoxic, sustainably produced compostable product.
We support Fair Trade, Domestic Fair Trade and other verifiably fairly traded commodities. We actively promote products that are made with organically grown ingredients. We also promote local organic agriculture, sustainable farming, manufacturing and distribution.
Sundance believes that genetically engineered foods crops are intrinsically unsustainable and unsafe, both to human and environmental health. We actively and wholeheartedly work to keep GE food ingredients out of our store.
Sundance sets lower prices for customers on foods created and sold to us by local vendors who are incorporating organic and sustainable practices in their company and products. Sundance also has lower prices on some foods we consider staples of a healthy diet, labelled around the store as “Sundance Staples.”
Sundance is here for the long run. The Sundance Perpetual Purpose Stewardship Trust is our vehicle for being here for all those who will work and shop here in the generations to come. Since we are all mortal, stewardship allows us to take care of what we will eventually pass on to our children, grandchildren, and the world at large. Stewardship creates for us a form of immortality, ensuring that while any individual “I” is transient, “we” will continue.
