Your Neighborhood Health Food Store
What sets us apart as a store is our employee’s extensive knowledge and genuine care for our customers. We are extremely well versed in determining the right supplement for a specific problem or person as a whole.
In addition to full lines of vitamins, herbs, and supplements, we specialize in foods for a variety of special diets and have a large selection of gluten-free, dairy-free, allergen-free, vegetarian, and vegan foods as well. We also have natural home and beauty products, essential oils, local honey, organic wines, and much more.
Since we're an independent retailer, we are also able to do special orders, so if there is a product you're looking for that we don't carry, please let us know and we'll try to find it for you.
Entirely Women Owned
Pass Health Foods has always been entirely women owned since 1995 when sisters, Joanne and Theresa bought the store. Scroll to the bottom of this page to read more about our store’s history!
Pictured from left to right, our four owners: Theresa, Liz, Carolyn, and Joanne
Our Staff
Carolyn and Liz
Carolyn and Liz are Co-Owners of Pass Health Foods.
Carolyn (left), is the niece of founding owners, Theresa and Joanne, and Liz (right) has always been a close friend of the Callaghan sisters. Both are grateful to continue the wonderful business that Joanne and Theresa started.
Carolyn and Liz are great friends and complement each other very well. They work different days depending on their staff’s availability, but you’ll almost always see them at the store together on Mondays.
Ale is our full time manager and has been a part of Pass Health Foods for many years, through high school, college, and her Masters Degree program. We are incredibly grateful for her!
Gina worked at the store a few years ago and we are thrilled that she came back to us. In her spare time she fosters rescue dogs. She's also taking classes to become a certified herbalist.
Jodi is our resident scientist who works at Northwestern Center for Genetic Medicine working in regenerative medicine. She’s been working at the store since she started college and still works one Saturday a month at the store, something we’re very thankful for since we love to see her.
Kannon is currently studying at Moraine Valley to become a Teacher. He likes to skateboard and take his dog, Bean, on walks.
Liani is in her freshman year at Elmhurst University studying International Business. She still works about once a month when she’s not cheerleading at their football games on Saturdays!
Mo is a Junior who now is going to school full time at DePaul University studying business. He still helps us out at the store occasionally on Saturdays.
We are incredibly lucky to have such an amazing staff!
The History of our Store
In 1995, sisters and friends, Joanne and Theresa, bought Pass Health Foods.
“We were shopping at health food stores much of the time, and saw a need for something different: a health food store where the true focus was on helping people and changing lives for the better through vibrant health.”
Sisters, Joanne and Theresa, bought Pass Health Foods back in 1995. At the time, both sisters had been working for the same company and were “downsized” and lost their jobs. They thought it would be wonderful to go into business together. They were interested in health, and were shopping at health foods stores regularly, so when they saw Pass Health Foods was for sale 25 years ago, they thought it was a great opportunity.
Owning a small business gave them flexibility (and it was small- the store was half the size back then) since they were both caring for their aging father at the time. The business gave them the ability to have one person work while the other took care of their dad. For a long time, it was just Joanne and Theresa working at the store, working in shifts to cover all the hours, with some extra help from Theresa’s mother-in-law, Betty, and a couple other family friends.
Margot Rosenstein was the first real employee at the store, who started back in 1998. Margot used to be a caseworker at the Cook County Juvenile Court, which I feel is a surprise to people who know her now since she is so sweet and soft spoken. She retired from the court in 1997 and had been a customer at the health food store when Theresa was pregnant. After Theresa had her child, she asked if Margot wanted to work there, and she ended up working at the store for nearly 20 years and still comes in to visit.
Many other family members and friends have worked at the store over the years and some continue to this very day!
Carolyn, Theresa and Joanne’s niece, and started working at the store in 2002, and then Liz, the other store manager began working at the store while Carolyn was pregnant with her daughter, River, in 2010. Liz worked on the PTA with Theresa at their kid’s school, and after getting to know her, Theresa asked Liz if she’d like to work at the health food store with them.
Much at the store has changed over the years, though much has stayed the same too. We still carry many of the same supplement lines that we did when the sisters bought the store back in 1995. There have been lots of fads and trends, but I think we’ve stayed true to our mission of really trying to help people, and to be a place where people can come for trusted advice and information on natural health.
At the beginning of 2020, for our 25th Anniversary Year, Carolyn and Liz were added on as co-owners which gave Joanne and Theresa more time to spend with family, including sisters in Arizona and Maine.
2025 is our 30th Anniversary Year and is also Joanne and Theresa's official retirement. They've left an amazing legacy that we feel so lucky to be able to continue.
We are so grateful to have a small business that's both survived and thrived and we're looking forward to what the future holds for us! We're so thankful for the wonderful customers and staff that we have that have and we're really excited as we look to what this year and the many to follow will bring.