Good Earth Market, Billings: Young, Energetic, and Growing
June 28th, 2010
By Gail Nickel-Kailing, Managing Editor, Food CEO
When a market averages continuous double-digit growth, year after year, through good times and bad, you know they’re doing something right. Good Earth Market in Billings MT is not only doing things right, they’re the right things.
The Market’s mission: “to build, market and sustain the region’s ability to produce and consume local, organic, and sustainable food and goods.”
Surrounded by buttes and cliff rock, Billings is located in “dry farming” country where homesteaders struggled to raise enough on their claims to survive. Today the city is thriving and growing.
Perry McNeese, General Manager of Good Earth Market, is proud of the growth he, his staff, and the members have nurtured for the food co-op. Founded in 1994 in the traditional fashion – as a buying group – the co-op is young compared to others in the state. And in a rough-and-tumble town where “white socks, red necks, and Blue Ribbon beer” abound, more than 4,400 are paid members of the co-op.
McNeese is committed to buying organic and sustainably produced products from Montana. Buying from 81 individual producers and 21 small local and regional distributors means more than 100 sets of invoices and payments, making for a book keeper’s challenge. And some are so small they are paid in cash. More nearly $700,000 went directly to Montana producers and local distributors last year when retail sales topped $2,700,000.
Items you may not find in the “usual” natural food market regularly turn up on the shelves here, including emu and buffalo meat. And for those locals who want their steaks and beer; Good Earth offers organic grass-fed beef and local micro-brews!
A bit of local news: just a week ago, Billings was hit by a tornado that destroyed a number of small businesses and the city’s 12,000-seat sports arena. A heavy rainfall flooded streets and basements, and to top it off, 2-inch hail finished off the remaining standing gardens. Most of the mess has already been cleaned up and residents are optimistically rebuilding and replanting. Tough homesteader blood still runs through a lot of veins here!
Up next: Big Timber Meats. Organic meat producers must have their meat processed at an organic meat processor.
