Sandy Gooch is the founder of Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Foods Markets. She created a successful chain of supermarkets dedicated to providing the finest food and health-care products available. After suffering a life-threatening reaction to food chemicals, the only way Sandy could survive was to eliminate all additives from her diet. Difficulty locating a variety of natural foods motivated her to open the largest market of its kind, thus becoming the first woman to develop a supermarket chain in the United States. Operations continually expanded, larger stores opened, and a 90-million-dollar-a-year business developed. In 1993, Mrs. Gooch’s was acquired by Whole Foods Markets, Inc.