The Bobcat Nation

It looks like we have a lot of people with lots of knowledge and passion about eating healthy on here, so I'm hoping you guys can help me out.

As most of you may know, my wife and brother and I own the grocery store in Winifred, and we have been working really hard to make the store the best resource it can be for the Winifred community. We recently completed a survey of virtually everyone in the town across a lot of different topics, including a generic "What would you like us to carry that we currently don't?"

What we heard back from lots of different people is that they would like to see a lot more healthy foods and foods that would be good for people trying to lose weight. Looking at what we currently have in the inventory (most of which is based on what the previous owners stocked), we do carry a LOT of junk food. And now, having heard back from the people in the community, I'm in full agreement that we need to make some changes.

So this is where I need your help. Can you suggest foods that you, as a health-conscious shopper like to see in your local stores? We would like to focus on increasing our healthy snack foods (and getting rid of a lot of the crap candy we carry), healthy dinner foods (frozen foods, etc.) and anything else that would likely sell well and would be a much healthier alternative to what is often seen on the shelves of limited-inventory food stores.

Any suggestions you guys can make will be greatly appreciated.

Just throwing this out there as something to think about...

What if you stock more healthy and nutritious items and nobody buys them because they have preconceived notions / bias about nutrition and health? Maybe it would help to put out some kind of brochure or pamphlet that goes into a little more than "eat vegetables," so people understand there's more to being healthy and can make more informed decisions. Things that we normally overlook and don't think about like pH, insulin, inflammatories, etc.

Having said that, I think nuts and seeds are good additions. I like golden flaxseed. It's absolutely loaded with nutrients and protein. It's small like sesame. I sprinkle it on everything I eat, I can't taste it, and I never even notice it. I also like sunflower kernels (sans the shell). Not just a bag of spits, but the actual kernel roasted. Also high in nutrients and protein. I also sprinkle them on everything I eat. Unlike flaxseed, they do have some taste and make a pretty good standalone snack. Roasted pumpkin kernels without the shell are an excellent snack. A little too big to sprinkle on food, but they taste great and again have tons of nutrients and protein. Cashews -- not to repeat myself, but pretty much all the same stuff as the other nuts I've mentioned, just with a different taste.

I know salmon is one of the absolute greatest foods there is out there. It's one of the "superfoods."

As far as fruit goes, kiwi are among the tops for a couple of reasons. Way more nutrients and minerals than a lot of the other fruits we think of as being healthy and they're pretty cheap too.

Dates are another underrated fruit and taste great (when fresh), maybe because they're not common up here. It might not be too hard to get them, I think they grow them out in the palouse.

Blue berries are incredibly healthy. Blueberries tend to be on the expensive side, but blackberries are cheaper and have nearly all the same attributes.

Hope this gives you some things to think about.

I've always been impressed with the Trader Joe's and Fresh & Easy stores here in San Diego. They always have fresh foods and even the snacks are health-based as well.

If you've got these stores in the Bay Area, I'd suggest checking them out because I have a feeling this is sort of the grocery-store model you're looking for.

You might want to hop over to Lewistown and check out The Big Spring Market. It's probably the type of small market store your looking for. I don't think you want to change to a full on health food store but the one in Lewistown is pretty small and not knowing the size of the store in Winifred, maybe a small addition or just some product movement could be what your looking for. Here is their website http://www.bigspringcoop.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If people really want to eat healthy, they need to shop the walls. As in, whole or unprepared foods. Getting a good selection of bulks foods is a great place to start.

I think a lot of people fail to realize the work that goes into truly eating healthy. They must actually cook for themselves. So no specific suggestions. But I do heart me some Trader Joe's. It's the one of the few things missing from Bozeman right now.

I wish it was possible for me to shop in Winifred!

I'd ditto a lot of the things people above said. Assuming that your customer base is small, and that you don't want to haul in a bunch of spinach only to have it go bad before anyone buys it, I'd suggest things that "keep" for a long time. Basically, if your grandma grew it in her garden then kept it in her cellar till January, it might stock well and be a good bang for your buck as grocers. Things like potatoes, spaghetti squash, nuts, frozen berries, etc.

I'd also suggest introducing new items with a "meal suggestion" with them. I'd never been introduced to spaghetti squash and actually cooked noodles to use along side of it the first time. If you're introducing new inventory, it could be fun to have recipe suggestions on a website or as postcards you send out to regular customers once a month.

The obvious comes to mind: buy local meat and partner with a local butcher to provide it in your local store.

Bobcat Sig wrote:If people really want to eat healthy, they need to shop the walls. As in, whole or unprepared foods. Getting a good selection of bulks foods is a great place to start.

I think a lot of people fail to realize the work that goes into truly eating healthy. They must actually cook for themselves. So no specific suggestions. But I do heart me some Trader Joe's. It's the one of the few things missing from Bozeman right now.

The ones I've been to certainly do have a good selection of darker and heavier beers.

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I don't know much about the winifried clientele, however I did spend the weekend near Hobson so I'll take a stab at it.

Idea 1: Would it be possible for those from the community to sell/trade their fresh fruits and veggies at the store? Not sure how that would go during the winter, but could make for some nice fresh veggies during the summer/fall months.

Idea 2: Smoothies. I love me some junga/jamba juice, and this might be a nice alternative to Mountain Dew and Schmidt.

Idea 3: Contact the local 4-H/FCLA/BPOA clubs and see if a few high school kids want to take this on as a community service project. I'm sure they have their finger closer to the pulse of Winifredians than I do.

Whatever you decide on, maybe you could have a huge formal announcement with Ed Butcher as the Master of Ceremonies.

Bobcat Sig wrote:If people really want to eat healthy, they need to shop the walls. As in, whole or unprepared foods. Getting a good selection of bulks foods is a great place to start.

I think a lot of people fail to realize the work that goes into truly eating healthy. They must actually cook for themselves. So no specific suggestions. But I do heart me some Trader Joe's. It's the one of the few things missing from Bozeman right now.

Well said! Sadly eating things preprocessed and labeled as healthy because it's low in something usually means it far from healthy and high in something else bad.

There are a few processed things that we buy that are a little better than the regular. Food For Life Ezekiel or Sprout 9 Grain breads, plus they come frozen so you wouldn't have to worry too much about turn over. If you're looking for a Gluten Free bread option the only one I found I liked was Udi brand. Again frozen. I also like the Sandwich Thins, I think they're Arnold brand, not necessarily health food but lower cal and make a tasty sandwich! The Sante Fe Tortilla Company makes great whole grain tortillas that taste good and aren't high fat, but we can only get them at Sam's so I don't know how you'd be able to buy them. For lunchmeat we only buy the Oscar Meyer Minimally Processed turkey or ham.

Wow, for someone who doesn't eat a lot of sandwiches, I have a lot of recommendations for them eh?

For kid things we do a lot of Annie's, the mac and cheese isn't scary orange color and the kids still like it!

Sadly, even though you do carry a lot of junk food and people want healthier options, you probably already have healthy options people just don't like to buy them

Thanks for all of the suggestions! One of the countless things I love about this board and everyone who posts here -- the way it sure makes getting good and interesting knowledge easy and enjoyable.

ChiOCat wrote:Sadly, even though you do carry a lot of junk food and people want healthier options, you probably already have healthy options people just don't like to buy them

You touched on something I meant to say, and probably did a better job of articulating it.

In my experience, everybody says they want to eat healthier. Then they find out it costs a little more. Then they find out, like Bobcat Sig said, that there's a lot of planning involved. It's also quite time consuming to prepare meals from scratch. But it's like anything else, once you do it long enough it becomes habit and you move quicker.

BAC, I wouldn't want to tell you how to run your own business but I would hate to see you buy into what we're all talking about and then have it be a waste of money because your customers decide to stick with what's more familiar and more comfortable to them. Maybe roll these ideas out in baby steps or something and see what kind of response you get.

Honestly, virtually everything we do in terms of changing our product offerings is done in baby steps by necessity (mainly because it's hard for me to affect a lot of revolutionary change from 1,500 miles away). So I'll certainly be taking your approach, Cledus. We kind of need to try to be all things to all people as the only store in town, so I can't turn it completely into a health food store or anything like that, but I think we could, for instance, scale back the incredibly large candy selection we have and replace some of that shelf space with some healthy snacks.

I also have some ideas for ways we might be able to ramp up our produce offerings while mitigating the risk of losing a ton of money to spoilage.

Every little idea helps, and I took little nuggests of wisdom from everyone's posts ... thanks again, all!

You also might want to look into selling some "allergy" related foods such as gluten-free, non-dairy, etc. I'm not sure how cost effective that would be to get, especially where you can't order large quantities to knock down your cost, but for folks who had food-related issues it might be nice.

Not sure how it would fly with the cattle ranchers in the area but bison meat might be an option.

All I need is some tasty Zingers and a cool vodka buzz and Im fine.

Not sarcastic, but very sincere. Load up on the jerky from Lincoln. Beer from Belt, Belgrade and Wibaux. Lots of bottled water from Lewistown. Set up something to grill/barbeque on the sidewalk for the end of the day featuring some of our great sausage and/or steak. Because of your location, I'd suggest you use Red River potatoes from North Dakota and utilize some of the Wisconsin cheese. I would suggest charcoal with sage and cedar smoked food on the sidewalks in the evenings as the sun goes down. I know it sounds like it could wind up being more work than you'd want to put in, but the margin versus the overhead would afford you the opportunity to do something such as the strange guy that does the Montana coffee trader lifestyle. You could even do a decent breakfast featuring some of the Montana kid's coffee from Kona, Hoot eggs and veggies. Just random thoughts as to what all our oilfield workers getting screwed by the company store folks need for a quick break from reality.

There's a farm / ranch in Powell that sells organic beef. All their product is grass fed and no hormones are added. It most definitely would be more expensive but hey, if your customers are asking for healthier alternatives that doesn't mean they have to turn into vegetarians and vegans. After all, the west wasn't won on salad.

Rocky Mtn Organic Meats

BTW, my all fat and fruit diet has resulted in my BP dropping from 130/84 to 107/70.

Dont have soda, snacks and candy.

Go Aussie!





TimTams are A-Maz-Ing but Vegemite is nasty. Must be an acquired taste. It tastes like concentrated soy sauce mixed with toejam and has the texture of fig newton filling.