Happy New Year from all of us at Ferndale Market! Many of you may recall that we celebrated the 15th anniversary of our market opening last fall. As we discussed the milestone here as a team, someone jokingly suggested we should release a “Greatest Hits” album to commemorate. We may not have any hits to re-release, but the humorous idea got me thinking about the long list of good fortune that’s fueled us over these past 15 years. I thought I’d share a few of our good fortune “hits” in my monthly updates over the year ahead. So, in no particular order, here’s the first track of our Ferndale Good Fortune album:
Thousand Hills Cattle Company was one of the very first brands we carried at Ferndale Market, in part because they were literally our neighbors across the highway. Founded in Cannon Falls just a few years before we opened, we knew them well and admired the model they built for distributing their grass-fed beef. If you can’t have turkey, there are few things better than their beef tenderloin! In addition to being a great mentor with delicious beef, they had a warehouse we envied. They had the cooler space, loading docks, and organization we didn’t.
Low and behold, in 2017 Thousand Hills decided to move north to Becker, MN. Immediately, we jumped at the opportunity to move into their former warehouse space. Prior to that point, we were doing all our wholesale fulfillment out of the back end of our store. We were crowded, out of cooler space, and fumbling to figure out how to grow. We’d simply outgrown the space we had. If the availability of the former Thousand Hills spot wasn’t pure good fortune, I don’t know what is. It was a game changer.
Today that warehouse proudly carries a sign saying Ferndale Distribution Center, and all our turkey products pass through that space. It’s become a second home for us, but I’ll always be grateful for the incredible turn of good fortune that made it possible.
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