Good Living Greens is Fountain Hills’ own independent grocery store that provides organic, high-quality produce and cold-pressed juices with ingredients sourced directly from their microgreen farm.

Jeremy and Jill Keefe are the owners of Good Living Greens, setting up shop on Parkview Avenue in May of this year after starting their business in 2019 in their bonus room, where Jeremy had built an indoor hydroponic growing system.

“A few years ago, there were a series of three recalls in a row of romaine lettuce and spinach, and you’d go to the grocery store and they were just gone,” Jill said, who was tired of the E. coli outbreaks. “I just did this arm waving to my husband, ‘Why can’t we figure out how to get the [stuff] out of the food,’” she said.

A few days later, Jill returned home from a business trip to find that her husband had emptied their bonus room and built an indoor microgreen hydroponic system.

Proud of her husband’s ingenuity and green thumb, Jill started sharing pictures of their freshly grown broccoli, radishes and romaine lettuce online, “and then people were like, ‘I’ll take two,’ and my little commerce self was like, ‘let’s turn that into a business,’” Jill said.

After 33 years of a “high burnout job, corporate kind of treadmill situation,” Jill put in her six-month notice and, the very next day, reported to her new boss, she said, gesturing toward her husband, Jeremy.

With less than a year in their current location, Jill and Jeremy have filled a need for freshly sourced produce in Fountain Hills.

“You always hear people say, ‘Why can’t we get a Sprouts? Why can’t we get a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe’s or whatever?’” Jill said. “We’re not in a position to be that kind of scale, but what we can do is we can acquire good organic produce, and with that, we make cold press juices.”

Good Living Greens offers a selection of nine organic cold-pressed juices including Good Morning Sunshine, a carrot-based drink with orange, apple and lime, and Easy Greens, which blends celery, cucumber, kale, spinach, apple and lemon – all organic – into a bright, bestselling juice.

In their commercial-size kitchen, Jill and Jeremy also sell their organic produce (pre-juiced), dairy, eggs, hummus, coffee, fresh salad kits, a curated selection of cheese and much more.

“I think a lot of people – I did – believe that organic is just too expensive,” Jill said. “But if you’re eating mindfully and you have a game plan for what you’re going to make and you’re not just buying food to have food in the house…you can manage your budget and still choose things that are a little cleaner, less pesticides. You don’t need the poison in your body. I want to introduce this possibility because a lot of people have just written it off.”

Jeremy and Jill have partnered with other local businesses that share the same vision of offering freshly sourced food like Proof Bread, a grassroots sourdough bakery based in Mesa, Golden Rule Dairy, a family-owned and operated Jersey cattle dairy farm in Elfrida, Ariz., Raul’s Cocina, Mexican comfort food offering vegan and gluten-free alternatives, All About the ‘Booch, a kombucha microbrewery based in Glendale and Access Café, a Fountain Hills-based organic coffee roastery.

“Through connecting with other Arizona small businesses that are also trying to do something clean and healthy, we want to be a platform for those other small businesses to get their products seen and heard and out there into the world,” Jill said. “We hope it’s a win-win-win for the town, for other small businesses as well as for us.”

Jill says one thing people may not know is that Good Living Greens takes custom orders, working with individuals who are on a strict juicing plan with their doctor or naturopath.

Jill tells of one of her current customers who is working with her doctor on a specific juicing regimen and drops Jill and Jeremy an email whenever she’s ready for more. Another example came in the form of a cancer diagnosis when a customer walked into their store, asking for help on a juicing plan while their partner underwent chemotherapy.

“When somebody comes to you and is like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to even hold it down, but my doctor says this is a good way to get nutrition in me,’ we want to be able to support people like that,” Jill said.

From the beginning, Jill and Jeremy envisioned their independently owned grocery store to be for those who want to be conscious and mindful about what they eat.

“Whatever your philosophy is about what you should eat, we just think do it consciously and choose the cleanest, freshest, least processed ingredients you can,” Jill said.

Good Living Greens, 16842 E. Parkview Ave., Suite 2, is open Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. They can be reached by phone at 480-687-5233 or by email at jill.keefe@goodlivinggreens.com.

To sign up for notifications on new products, discounts and promotional codes, or to inquire about being a Good Living Greens partner, visit goodlivinggreens.com.