From the Homer Tribune: Alaska Wild Berry Products is selling its Homer building and will close by year's end, if not sooner. The company's Anchorage operations will continue unchanged.
The Homer store's history spans nearly six decades after the mayor of Homer, Hazel Heath, and her husband Ken began making jams and jellies from local berries and selling them. The Heaths ran the business until 1975, expanding the Homer store to include the rustic-sided combination of small houses now found on Pioneer Avenue. Harry and Betty Brundage bought the business from the Heaths in 1973, and sold it to Peter Eden in 1975. Eden has owned it since then. It wasn't until 1989 that chocolate-covered candies — now arguably the flagship of the business — were produced.
Hazel Heath, who passed in 1998, wrote about her early days in Homer in "In Those Days — Alaska Pioneers of the Lower Kenai Peninsula," saying it was the abundance of food, including the berries, which lured her to Homer in the first place.
Read more: Wild Berry closing doors after nearly 60 years in Homer
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