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Lincoln’s Hi Country Snack Foods Doing Montana proud

Lincoln’s Hi Country Snack Foods http://www.hicountry.com/ has survived as a prosperous local business despite the growing threat of multi-national companies

LINCOLN – It’s hard to imagine a sophisticated multi-million dollar food business operating out of the remote upper Blackfoot Valley.

By BETSY COHEN of the Missoulian

It’s even harder to imagine that in this day and age, such an enterprise would be run like a family business.

But the two oddities are saddled to each other and have weathered – and thrived – for 27 years with the tenacity of the prospectors who founded this former mining town in the late 1880s.

Welcome to Hi Country Snack Foods, manufacturers of items such as gourmet beef jerky, elk sausage and buffalo salami.

Depending on the season, 50 to 60 people work in the immaculately clean, one-story processing plant surrounded by pastures and mountains on Highway 200, just on the outskirts of this sleepy unincorporated town. The employee break room speaks to the company’s homey atmosphere with its filled bookshelves, magazine racks, tidy tables and a colored television.

The large log building in the parking lot isn’t somebody’s trophy home, it’s the company’s gift shop, where other Montana-made items are sold. This is Montana Proud Country where other Montana products – like mustards, jams, spices and teas – get priority display space and are promoted at the request of Hi Country’s owner, Jim Johnson.

After all these years, he knows the challenge of competing with large corporations and box stores, and he knows, as did the town’s founders, you have to look out for each other if you’re going to succeed.

"It takes perseverance," Johnson said. "We are probably as isolated as you can get from incoming and outgoing freight and an employee base."

The company began in 1976 with two owners and two employees making beef jerky. Today it sells more than two dozen products in eight western states and selected markets across the country, said Janet Drexel, marketing director. It is 33 percent employee owned, offers retirement benefits, pays an average salary of $8 to $12 an hour and is by far and away the largest employer for miles around.

Although the business has boomed over the decades, Johnson is in the middle of overhauling the company’s business plan to adjust for his retirement down the road, the slow economic climate and the changing texture of the meat snack industry.

He’s trying to keep what might be the inevitable at bay- a sellout to one of the three largest jerky companies that are buying out the little businesses.

"There’s somebody every month trying to get in here, but it’s just not something I want to do," he said. Yes, he and his family would stand to make a lot of money if such a transaction occurred, but he’s convinced having an out of state company own and operate the business wouldn’t be good for Lincoln – or Montana.

There’s less quality control, more automation, fewer jobs and no commitment to the area, he said.

Product Supervisor Chris Castagne knows that to slice 800 pounds of meat, it takes three Hi Country employees all day. If the businesses were to be bought out by a corporation, new machinery would be brought in to slice 5,000 pounds in three hours.

"We could do it here, but we won’t," Castagne said. "It takes away from our ability to make the best product we can."

Johnson said he is trying to pave the way for his homegrown company to be passed on to people in his hometown who are already invested in it.

Unlikely as it may sound, what happens in places like South America and New Zealand, and what large multi-national agricultural corporations do, directly impacts Hi Country’s business, its employees and the people it serves.

In October, Hi Country lost its contract with Costco to a multi-national company that could offer it a variety of products, including jerky.

With one phone call, the business lost 15 percent of its business and customers at Costco now pay $1.10 more for an 18 1/2 ounce bag of jerky made in South America.

"When the smell of money comes out – when a company like ConAgra comes around – the big box stores take the money and throw out the local companies," Johnson said. "What they don’t get is that the people who work for those local companies are the ones who are buying the products in those big stores – at some point there’s going to be a diminishing return."

The business trend, he said, is nothing new, but it’s getting worse as the largest companies get even larger.

It’s hard to compete in a world, he said, when employee statistics show that one out of every 123 employees in the United States, works for Wal-Mart.

In this past year alone, the trend has translated into a cold Montana reality – mom and pop businesses shutting down.

Hi Country has watched as 15 of its business customers – small privately owned convenient stores and grocery stores close for good.

Although there are no easy answers to alleviate the challenges, Johnson said, one thing’s for sure: his company will continue to generate Montana pride.

"We take full control of our product from the processing of raw material to the consumer walking out of the retail outlet," Johnson said.

"We offer quality, freshness and product that’s been hand-packed by the people who live here," he said. "And our product is part of our culture here."

Reporter Betsy Cohen can be reached at 523-5253 or at [email protected].

http://missoulian.com/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2003/February/13-2373-ht01.txt

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