These PREMIE millionaires were made by Divine Slave Labor

What a crock of shit!

This guy is now heralded as some kind of health food wizard and marketing genius, but they don't describe how he and other owners of Rainbow Grocery got their start.

These guys all made on the backs of Divine Slave Labor.  They'd be nobodies if they had to create, sustain, and grow a business that had normal cost structures.

My experience at Rainbow Grocery in Chicago was that it was started by the ashram in order to keep costs down when feeding a large group of people.  Certainly, there was a coordinated effort by ashrams to lower their costs by sending one or more ashram residents to the local wholesale produce markets to buy produce and other goods at wholesale prices.  Eventually, the idea got pushed out as food was purchased and delivered to premie houses. The natural extension was some kind of buying club that with a little seed capital got turned into a retail operation.

And the retail operations, as well as the buying clubs, were staffed by volunteers or ashram premies.  And the community urged non-ashram premies to do Service at the buying club location or the retail operation.

The Rainbow Grocery operations had a distinct advantage over local and established health food stores because Rainbow Grocery had volunteer labor.  Or at worse Rainbow Grocery used sleight of hand tricks to pay workers less than the legal minimum wage and avoided paying all worker related taxes like their share of Social Security and worker's compensation and liability and injury insurance and the like by hiring workers who were forced to sign "Independent Contractor" agreements.  And I believe that David Shimberg of Chicago was responsible for coming up with that concept in Chicago.

For myself, I was an unpaid volunteer at Rainbow Grocery from it's physical inception around December of 1994.  My first paycheck was in May of 1975 for the paltry amount of $40.00 per week, which was substantially less than the Federal minimum wage.  I did not receive any health benefits or any other kind of benefit.  In fact, during that time I had a bicycle wreck and had to go to the Emergency Room to get x-rays and stitches.  When I got the bill from the hospital I had to plead poverty and have them write it off.  Yes, this was an example of Maharaji bringing peace and harmony to the troubled planet.  Well, if only parents still paid to clothe and feed their cult-gone children and hospitals would forego payment and Federal programs would provide Food Stamps and other services.

Oh, and, of course, Rainbow Grocery was a non-profit entity and paid no taxes that most commercial entities are required to make.  Got to love the "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's" premie attitude.

Rainbow Grocery of Chicago became a huge success.  Competitors suffered and complained and filed lawsuits alleging they were driven out of business by slave labor used by Rainbow.  Yes, that's true.  They were, indeed, harmed because of slave labor.  We laughed at them for their lack of understanding of who we were and what we were doing!

At some point the ownership of Rainbow Grocery of Chicago was secretly transferred to Steve Kriston by DLM/DUO/The Ashram for whatever reasons.  Within a year Steve Kriston had purchased a very nice condo right near Lake Michigan.  He was driving a BMW and stores were popping up all over the city.  And, yes, there was a secret store in Evanston that might have been owned by  Atlanta's Jim Hennisson? or some guy named Jim.  Also, see the Word document links to see all the players involved in the final sale of Rainbow in 1994 that put Steve Kriston way over the top as a multi-millionaire.

I remember that one weekend some national DLM big wheel had stayed at Kriston's.  I was there and I saw and was told that the person liked porno and that's cool and that's why they had two porno tapes delivered by a local porno delivery service.  Gosh, how cool and liberated, I thought.  But, they'd really prefer to stay home watching porno than going to hear satsang?  Yes, I was GREEN.

Here's another sick aspect of this dirty business that still bothers me.  Rainbow Grocery was co-op and it really was in the beginning, but soon it was a viable for-profit, but not-paying any local, state or federal taxes.  As a co-op Rainbow would charge members an annual fee of something like $25 or $35 per person or $50 or $60 per household.  If people didn't want to be members they could shop at Rainbow, but they would be charged a 10% surcharge.  I always felt funny when non-premie co-op members would come to the store to do service because we would encourage members to help out just like a lot of food buying clubs and co-ops do.  But it felt funny to me because it felt deceptive since I and other premies were volunteering because we were doing Service for Maharaji.  It just felt dishonest and wrong.

But, the funny story is that Rainbow Grocery was a member of a non-profit food wholesale outfit called GIPC, which stood for Greater Illinois People's Co-Op.  GIPC was a wholesaler who had some really crumby offices and a warehouse on the third floor of a building at Chicago's South Water Produce Market.  They were surviving on a song and a prayer.  But, they were good people who didn't have a guru that were trying to do that co-op thing for people thing that was the rage back then and still is in a few more interesting locales on the planet.

GIPC sold us cheese and whole wheat pasta at a very good price.  But, at the point where Rainbow Grocery was operating a successful retail storefront operation the GIPC board determined that Rainbow was no longer a real co-op and that Rainbow would need to pay a 10% surcharge.  And rightly so, in my opinion, because Rainbow's increasing purchases were straining GIPC's capacity to the point where GIPC needed to expand their operation.  Fair enough, I thought.  Well, good old Steve Kriston, the guy that nobody could get a long with, was rather miffed and complained and whined for a couple of weeks about it. Well, Steve decided, and it was a good business move, to cut out GIPC and buy direct from cheese producers in Wisconsin and get the pasta elsewhere.  It's funny because I believe, and I could be wrong, that a few years later Rainbow bought out GIPC.

The problem I have with Steve Kriston, the tofu king of Boulder and all the other owners or Rainbow Grocery like the one in Seattle is that these people made it off the backs of good natured and naive people who showed up and worked for free under the guise of serving Maharaji.  And then to see these operations turn retail and harm other honest business owners who gave a shit about their workers and paid taxes and minimum wage.  You know, it's nothing short of CRIMINAL.  Yes, CRIMINAL.  And now these CRIMINALS are millionaires getting their mugs pasted into magazines with glowing articles about their entrepreneurship.  Like I said, what a crock of shit colored toe-food.

http://www.drek.us/pages/corporate/rainbow/Prem_mark_Colorado.doc

http://www.drek.us/pages/corporate/rainbow/Sale_of_PremMark.doc

http://www.drek.us/pages/corporate/rainbow/prem_mark_corporate.doc

http://www.drek.us/pages/corporate/rainbow/rainbow_grocery.doc

Note: The usual suspects of Bob Jacobs, Donald De Laski, Alvaro Pascotto, John Bale in the above document.

http://www.drek.us/pages/corporate/rainbow/slave_labor_letter_page1.jpg

http://www.drek.us/pages/corporate/rainbow/slave_labor_letter_page2.jpg

http://www.unfi.com/

http://www.rainbownf.com/