One of Albert Lea’s biggest promoters of nutrition closed its doors last week after almost two years in operation.

Great Grains Market & Cafe, 112 S. Broadway Ave., has served as Albert Lea’s only vegan restaurant. It also offered vegan bulk supplies and other nutritional supplies.

When the store’s owner Norah Nainani first moved to Albert Lea in 2008, she said she had a dream for the market and cafe. She wanted to make it a community-gathering place where people could go to eat wholesome foods and learn to make healthy physical, mental and spiritual choices.

Even though the store and cafe were open for a relatively short time, many of her customers are saying they have been changed by what they learned there.

“I don’t think this town realizes what they’re losing,” said Albert Lea resident Barbara Hamberg, a vegetarian who went through the Coronary Health Improvement Program taught by Nainani’s daughter-in-law Stephanie Nainani, a physician at Albert Lea Medical Center.

Hamberg said she gained motivation and support to continue the lifestyle she learned in the program at Great Grains. She gathered with the other CHIP alumni regularly at the cafe to share support and experiences.

“For me to have a cafe in town where I could have lunch was such a joy,” Hamberg said. “And that I could bring someone here and know they’re getting something healthy, I will be forever grateful to Norah for all she’s given the community.”

Hamberg said she wishes the town had supported the store and cafe more.

“I don’t think many people get the connection between food and body,” she said. “We are what we eat. Food effects us physically and spiritually.”

During the less than two years the store and cafe have been opened, Nainani has hosted CHIP classes, depression recovery classes and cooking classes, among others. In addition to serving food at the cafe, Great Grains prepared a special vegetarian meal for The Montessori Children’s House of Albert Lea and taught 10 chefs from the Rochester Public Schools to make healthier choices for their students.

Nainani said people would come from all over the country to eat at the cafe when they were traveling, telling her it was an “oasis in the desert.”

“Had we been able to hold on another year, we might have made it,” she said.

However, the cost of a vegan chef got to be too much.

She said she tried doing all the cooking on her own, but it was too much to handle, along with her other responsibilities.

Nainani said she will miss all the friends she has made, after she moves from Albert Lea to go on a one-year volunteer health mission at the Black Hills Health & Education Center in South Dakota.

There, she will help in the kitchen and wherever else she is needed. Having attended the center for three weeks recently, she said she was so impressed with what she experienced that she wanted to give back.

“I’m sorry to leave,” Nainani said. “It’s just been a joy to teach people.

“It got a lot of people in Albert Lea thinking about nutrition, and I’m grateful for the opportunity we’ve had to do that.”

She said she is thankful for her loyal customers and the volunteers that helped make the store and cafe possible.

She noted she hopes someone who is also a promoter of nutrition will come into the cafe next. She will sell all of the equipment, tables and indoor furnishings to whoever decides to take it on.

Nainani said the depression recovery course will continue at the local Seventh-Day Adventist church.

Nainani’s son Greg, a compliance officer at Albert Lea Medical Center, and his wife, Stephanie, will also soon be leaving the area to move to Walla Walla, Wash.