Come down with a cold? Echinacea. Suffering from toenail fungus? Tea tree oil.
For three decades, Cheryl’s Herbs in Maplewood has provided people access to natural, homeopathic remedies through herbs and extracts. The store is named for its founder, Cheryl Hoard, who was both an herbalist and registered aromatherapist.
“The cool thing about Cheryl was, to me, she was a woman who was before her time,” Tiffany Jones, the store’s current owner, said. “She was an aromatherapist as well as an herbalist. Sometimes, you don’t find the two mixed. You either have one or the other.”
Jones acquired the store in July 2019, after Hoard’s family sought to sell the business after Hoard’s death in May 2015.
The store had been a fixture in Jones’ and her husband’s life ever since she moved to St. Louis from South Carolina in 2003. So, when she heard the family was interested in selling, Jones jumped on the opportunity to get to know them and the business.
“Our goal is to be a national brand where people can recognize us, no matter where they are.” —Tiffany Jones
“I come from a long line of entrepreneurs, and my family always encouraged us to go out and find our passions and do things like that,” she said, later noting her professional background consisted of work in business-to-business sales.
Jones has worked hard since buying the store to ramp up online sales. This effort, thankfully, was in full swing by the time the pandemic shut down most in-person shopping. As well as online sales, Cheryl’s Herbs has a brick-and-mortar store at 7223 Manchester Road in Maplewood and also sells wholesale products to various private labels and places like health food stores, prisons and grocery stores.
“We only sell the things that we make here,” Jones said. “So, we don’t sell anybody else’s products — all the things you see we make.”
She breaks down what the store offers into three main categories: essential oils, dried herbs and liquid extracts. These come in both pre-mixed products and single ingredients. Jones said two of her most popular products are a male-focused liquid formula that combats erectile dysfunction and a female-focused liquid extract that eases PMS and menopausal symptoms.
“When people come in, and they’re like, ‘Oh this helped me from the night sweats and the irritability’ or, for men, getting aroused so that they don’t have to use Viagra, I’m just like, that’s amazing,” Jones said. “I love that we can provide people with things that come from plants.”
Jones and her seven-employee team also provide research and other information to their customers online and throughout the store on bookshelves. She confirmed they saw an uptick in interest in homeopathic treatments in the wake of COVID-19.
“People were just trying to take care of themselves and their respiratory system,” she said.
Jones recently graduated from the WEPOWER Elevate accelerator, a six-month entrepreneurship development program for Black & Latinx entrepreneurs that provides curriculum, connections, community and access to capital through grants. She said the people in that program made her success possible.
Buying Cheryl’s Herbs brought its share of challenges, mainly because it wasn’t just a retail store. There’s a whole production operation just behind a wall covered in greenery at her shop. Add to that Cheryl’s Herbs customers who were worried she would change what they loved about the store.
While Jones said she revamped the labeling and brought the store’s systems up to date technology-wise (they no longer accept cash), the recipes and the shop’s core remain the same.
“It’s a new ownership, and I think a lot of people felt like we were changing, but we stayed the same in our recipes and our products,” Jones said. “So, we wanted to let people know the changes that we did make were for the benefit of the business, to bring it into the new century.”
The business owner said her goals for the future of Cheryl’s Herbs involve leaning into more wholesale and private label business as demand increases for larger quantities of products. She also wants to become a well-known name providing remedies for people no matter where they might be.
“Our goal is to be a national brand where people can recognize us no matter where they are,” Jones said. “I remember with my mom because we were in a small town, and she was looking for something to help her with her cancer, but it wasn’t available. And now you can go online and order it, and we can ship it anywhere.”
To learn more, visit cherylsherbs.com.