Gluten-Free Hero

A mother’s quest to provide for her son led Wendy Foo to launch Singapore’s first organic grocery.

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Healthy eating took on an entirely different meaning for Wendy Foo the day she found out that her three-year-old son Ryan was intolerant to dairy, gluten, nuts, soy, eggs, and yeast. What followed was a mad scramble trying to find suitable replacements that Ryan could eat. When they couldn’t find the right solution at home, the search for organic meat and gluten-free produce took Wendy and her husband, Sebastian, all the way to Australia. After numerous trips back and forth scouring for the holy grail, it dawned on Wendy that if you wanted good glutenfree food, you might just have to open your own grocery store.

Wendy said goodbye to her 25-year career in media sales, marketing, and advertising and in 2015, launched Ryan’s Grocery as the first organic grocery and butchery in Singapore. What started out as the solution to one mother’s problem quickly became the missing piece of the puzzle for other individuals and families who had special dietary requirements. Today, Ryan’s Grocery is the city’s one-stop for anyone looking for organic, allergen-free, preservative-free foods and free-range, organic, hormone-free, and antibiotics-free meats.

In 2016, the company also launched Alternative Selection, a wholesaler and retailer of alternative gourmet products. It currently supplies shops, cafes, restaurants, and hotels throughout Singapore and helps to develop and design gluten-free menus in hope of helping more people like Ryan find dietary solutions.

What was your first reaction when you found out Ryan had developed his allergies?