Madalyn Edwards
Author
Susie Candelaria, owner of Blue Mountain Herbs and Supplements, didn’t expect to change careers, but almost 25 years and a successful business later, she is helping the community by offering a wide variety of services related to natural medicines.
Originally a graphic artist, Candelaria changed her career path after taking an interest in the study of natural medicine. She found that focusing on her health through natural means improved the conditions she was suffering from at the time.
Candelaria studied the practice, took classes on classical homeopathy, and found a job as a supplement department manager during the ’90s. Through the New England School of Homeopathy, she became certified in natural medicine. After working at different health food stores in the Triad, she opened her own location in Surry County in 1999.
“I had a real entrepreneurial spirit inside of me,” Candelaria said. “I always wanted to have my own place and expand into what I could bring to the community.” In 2006, Blue Mountain moved to the store’s current location, 106 West Main Street, in Pilot Mountain, tripling the square footage and allowing Candelaria to stock more inventory and reach more customers.
Blue Mountain carries a variety of products, such as vitamins, supplements, minerals, probiotics, herbs, and homeopathic remedies. Candelaria uses her background in natural medicine to ensure that the formulas of the products she stocks are of high quality and meet her standards.
Candelaria loves helping customers make informed decisions for using natural medicine to improve their health. She tries to create a comfortable, pleasant, and soothing environment for customers. She said that nutritional health is “the core to everything,” and focusing on nutrition can often improve a variety of issues. From there, Candelaria takes several factors about an individual into account before recommending a course of treatment or natural remedies.
“It’s not like a drugstore approach where you go to a shelf at a drugstore and you pick one thing for one condition,” she said. “It’s more of a holistic approach where you’re looking at the entire individual, and you’re trying to give them options.” Candelaria also focuses on preventative care, guiding younger customers on pathways that can improve their future health and wellness.
Like most small businesses, Blue Mountain underwent various hardships during the pandemic. Though she did not allow customers inside the store, Candelaria decided to provide her services throughout the pandemic by offering curbside and mail orders. “Through the entire shutdown process, people would call me on the phone, and I would process orders over the phone and bring them out to them when they would drive up,” she said.
Adding her thoughts on the effects of the pandemic on the local community, Candelaria said she witnessed large, negative impacts that caused many to suffer long-lasting complications and others to lose their lives. “We all know folks that we’ve lost in our immediate community, so my heart goes out in all those ways,” she said.
Candelaria still offers curbside pickup to customers who request the service but said she has enjoyed seeing people return to her store this year. In addition to offering services to help customers improve and preserve their health, Candelaria has provided her customers with post-COVID-19 assistance.
“What I’ve been able to do is to provide the same nutritional information to help people restructure their health back… green foods, fruits and vegetables, organics, avoiding sugar,” she said. She has also provided forms of natural medicine such as supplements to customers to “rebuild the body back” after the impacts of COVID-19. Such treatments can aid in building one’s immune system back up or improving lung health. “I do everything that I can in that way to help guide them back to health,” she said.
Fortunately, Candelaria’s business, with the support of her husband and two part-time employees, is beginning to grow after the pandemic. Blue Mountain continues to offer services to help the community. Candelaria uses her professional knowledge to help customers but notes it’s important to also receive medical advice and input from medical professionals.
“My advice is never to supersede what a regular medical doctor would advise. My assistance is educational, and I offer opportunities and possibilities,” she said. “It’s important for people to create that dialogue with their actual medical professionals.”
More than anything, Candelaria wants to help those in the community in any way she can, which is why she started her business. “I really wanted to bring something here that could make a difference for our local community, for our town, and for our people not only in Pilot Mountain but this entire northwestern Piedmont area and even up into Virginia,” she said.
Blue Mountain Herbs and Supplements
Hours: Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m; Saturdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Phone: 336-368-5955.
