Nestled in the heart of Bellville, Whitaker’s Natural Market has built a reputation as more than just a health food store.
This family-owned and operated market has become a cornerstone for residents seeking natural healthy products, personalized health guidance and a welcoming shopping experience.
As it marks its 10th anniversary this December, the store is gearing up for a festive celebration that promises demos, samples and giveaways.
The milestone event is set for Sunday, Dec. 7, with extended hours from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“We are doing like gift bags for the first 50 customers with a $20 or more purchase,” Co-owner and Naturopathic Doctor Jocelin Whitaker told the Mount Vernon News. “Grunt Grub food truck is going to be there from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. We're going to have national and local suppliers doing demos, samples, so all kinds of different fun things that way.”
Healthful living and personalized service form the foundation of Whitaker’s Natural Market.
Founded on the principle that health begins at home, the market combines a local supermarket, organic food store, bulk supplier, homesteading shop and natural wellness practice.
It offers a curated selection of high-quality products, including meats, bakery items, nut butters, snacks, coffee and natural household and personal care items, along with specialty gluten-free and dairy-free options, vitamins, supplements, essential oils and other wellness-focused products.
Whitaker’s commitment to community engagement supports local artisans and keeps customers informed with updates on seasonal items, holiday offerings and local events through social media and newsletters, blending product promotion with health education and community connection.
The store’s 10th anniversary celebration harkens back to the store’s origins when Whitaker and her husband, Marc, turned a shared entrepreneurial dream into a reality.
Prior to opening the store Whitaker was employed at a ministry.
“I've always had that entrepreneurial spirit, and when the Christian ministry went through some financial issues and downsized from over 100 employees to 19, I made it to the last layoff,” she said. “I was like, ‘OK, what am I going to do? Where am I headed with this?’”
Whitaker said a profound health crisis in her childhood sparked her passion for natural healing, which, combined with her need to make a living, set her on the path to establishing Whitaker’s Natural Market.
“When I was five years old, I had chronic bronchitis,” she said. “I would be sick for two weeks, be well for two weeks, be sick for two weeks, and be well for two weeks. I went from child-dose antibiotics to adult-dosed antibiotics to steroids. By this point, the pharmacist had gotten to know my family, and he pulled my parents aside and said, ‘I really like your daughter. She's very sweet, but long-term steroid use is going to have a lot of negative impact on her body and her overall health. I would really encourage you to talk to your doctor about other options and not just keep doing the steroids.’”
A turning point came when her mother tried an herbal lung blend, now a store staple called ALJ, which resolved Whitaker’s chronic health issues and set her on a path to earn nine degrees and certifications, including a PhD in traditional naturopathy.
Meeting Marc, whose family ran a 120-acre farm raising Dexter cattle, poultry and more, felt like fate.
When both faced unemployment just before their wedding, the idea for Whitaker’s Natural Market quickly took root and became a shared goal.
“He knew the business side, and I knew the naturopathic side, so we decided to create something where we could both use our strengths and work together,” Whitaker said. “As a newlywed couple, me at 28 and him at 31, we wanted to spend time together, and one of the best ways to do that was through working together. You learn to play together, and you learn to handle challenges together.”
Marc and Jocelin Whitaker, co-owners of Whitaker’s Natural Market. The couple combined Marc’s agri-business experience and Jocelin’s naturopathic expertise to create the community-focused market. (Facebook / Jocelin Whitaker)
They scoured Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and Indiana before settling on the Bellville building, a former organic foods market that had sat vacant for a year.
Whitaker’s Natural Market opened with a soft launch in October 2015, followed by a grand celebration in December. Over time, the store evolved from Whitaker’s Farm Market, named to evoke farm-fresh bounty, to its current moniker, Whitaker’s Natural Market, to avoid confusion.
Bellville's Whitaker’s Natural Market marks 10 years as a go-to for natural foods, wellness items, and health advice. The family-owned spot merges a health market and naturopath services. (Facebook / Whitaker’s Natural Market )
The spacious store stocks chicken and eggs raised on Whitaker’s organic farm as well as beef, lamb, bison, turkey, dairy, frozen foods, spices, baking ingredients, canned goods, jams, jellies and pasta.
Customers can also find beauty and household items, books, animal feed, gift items and specialty kitchen tools such as Rada cutlery, Bosch mixers and NutriMill grain mills.
Bulk organic grains for home milling, sourdough supplies and baked goods from the store’s licensed home bakery complete the offering, catering to families seeking quality, affordability and education in one convenient location.
“I don't shop anywhere else,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker leads free in-store classes, offers expert guidance and provides tailored recommendations to help customers make informed decisions about their health.
This educational bent extends to countering social media fads with science-backed insights, as seen in Whitaker's Natural Market’s YouTube channel, which boasts over 220 videos featuring “Weekly Health Tips,” short, practical clips hosted by Whitaker covering dietary guidance, supplements, natural remedies, gardening tips and lifestyle advice.
The channel serves as a niche, trusted resource for followers seeking actionable health guidance in bite-sized formats.
Whitaker emphasized her role in an era of social media trends.
“The challenging part is, obviously people watch TikTok for crazes, and it's very faddish on TikTok,” she said. “So we try our best to be that really strong educational point because, with my degrees, just because TikTok says it's good doesn't necessarily mean it's good.”
Whitaker emphasizes that the goal is to provide reliable, evidence-based guidance that cuts through the noise of fleeting trends and social media hype.
“So we try to be that kind of balancing act of not just having faddish information, but really digging into the education, the clinical studies, the research, and what I've seen in my practice as a naturopath,” she said.
Her practice, housed within the store, draws clients nationwide for issues like digestive problems, thyroid concerns, reproductive health, Lyme disease and toxic mold, an area informed by Marc’s own survival of chronic mold exposure.
Whitaker offers one-on-one consults, bioenergetic testing and free Sunday Q&A sessions from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Free monthly classes from March through October or November cover homesteading and health topics, often with guest instructors, fostering dialogue in a group setting.
Staff training is another pillar. Whitaker equips her team, now handling Monday through Friday operations while she and Marc cover Sundays, to field questions.
“They've got a really good understanding of it and can start to work with the person in my stead,” she said.
The store’s rigor extends to product curation.
Whitaker pre-screens brands for purity and quality.
Local sourcing is key, pulling organic foods from Holmes County, Kenton and beyond, mindful that even Amish suppliers in Fredericktown often spray crops heavily.
“A lot of local sources in this community are from the Amish in Fredericktown,” Whitaker said. “It’s a great community, but some of them are just starting to go organic. Most of them spray as much, if not more, than your big commercial farms supplying the big box stores.”
Whitaker’s philosophy ties modern health woes to environmental shifts, like surging thyroid cancer diagnoses reportedly correlating with glyphosate use and GMO corn, urging a return to ancestral, whole-food ways.
“We used to eat what we raised,” she said. “We'd raise a cow, butcher it and eat it. We knew what they ate, and we didn't have all of these chemicals. You put them in, you were back on the field, and you rotated your crops. The Native Americans were nomadic, they moved with the seasons, so they never stayed in the same place. They had summer hunting grounds and winter locations, and the land would lay fallow in between, giving it rest periods. It was not overused the way we plant corn in the same field year after year.”
Building on this philosophy, Whitaker reflects on how traditional, seasonal lifestyles and diverse, chemical-free farming practices once supported human health, emphasizing the contrast with today’s monoculture farming, heavy pesticide use and overreliance on processed foods.
“We've created this monoculture, and it's heavily dependent on pesticides and herbicides,” she said. “Then you add in genetically modified organisms, including viruses, bacteria, and even human and animal genes, and we are playing with things that God created, that we as His created beings do not fully understand. If we go back to the lifestyle of eating whole foods the way God intended, it doesn't mean that I don't enjoy a beautiful cake with icing and lots of sugar, but I do it organic, without food dyes or chemicals, and I don't do it every day. There is a balance in all of these things, and we've lost that balance. We've lost the way, even just with electronics. We're in a very electronic world.”
Her impact shines through client transformations, like “Ashley,” who arrived unable to drive or care for her four children due to Lyme disease, dismissed as a mental health issue by doctors.
After five years of diet, supplements and lifestyle tweaks, Ashley not only regained her vitality but earned her own naturopathy degree and opened a practice in Lima, now collaborating with Whitaker.
“We continue to work together professionally, and seeing her transformation has been remarkable,” Whitaker said. “Mentally she was fine, but physically she was disabled. She had no energy, didn’t feel safe driving due to her vision, and faced numerous other challenges. She put in the work with her diet, supplements, and other necessary steps, and then experienced a full transformation, ultimately saying, ‘Look, this transformed my life.’”
This transformation not only highlights Ashley’s personal journey but also exemplifies Whitaker’s broader mission of empowering clients to regain their health and ultimately share that knowledge with others.
“Much like it did for me as a child, and becoming where she can now teach and educate more people, I love telling her story because that is my whole goal,” she said.
Whitaker emphasizes that her goal is not to keep clients dependent on supplements, but to help them achieve such lasting health and vitality that they only need occasional check-ins while fully enjoying their lives.
“If that person is feeling better and doesn't need me on an ongoing basis, they're going to turn around and tell 10 more people,” she said. “I'm never going to run out of people to help, and my goal is to get people feeling better, full of vitality and then multiply it. If I teach them lifestyle changes, they're going to share them with friends that I wouldn't necessarily have an audience with, and it will multiply.”
Another testament came from a staff-referred client with lupus, who documented her dramatic six-month transformation on social media.
“Her face was all poofy, the typical red from the lupus diagnosis, and the staff member had started working with her on her diet and lifestyle,” Whitaker said. “The lady came in, and we started working on her supplements, detox, gut health and all the different things. I screen captured her Facebook post of her before and after photo, and she said, ‘I feel so much better. I've lost weight. I feel vital again.’ It was amazing to read that post.”
For those unable to visit in person, Whitaker offers one-on-one online sessions. Her empowering approach, equipping clients with research and facts rather than spoon-feeding, fosters self-reliance.
“I'm interpreting it this way,” she said. “But I'm going to give you the data, and I want you to learn to research it for yourself, to feed yourself, versus me spoon-feeding you, because you need to be the grown-up and learn to do it.”
