Amish community expanding Farm to Market store

Looking at the unfinished frame of the 6400-square-foot expansion at Farm to Market store, manager and coowner Leona Mast smiled big as the building-to-be.

“Customers keep telling me that with the new space, we’ll be the Amish Costco,” she said.

Though there are similarities between Farm to Market and Costco’s warehouse-style stores, Farm to Market store is aiming for a “warm, community oriented place,” said Mast’s brother Lloyd Miller, another coowner, along with two other siblings.

The structure is being built by members of the Eagle Valley Amish community, who aim to finish it by spring of 2018 or sooner. Plans include a new entry way, landscaping, and expanded inside deli and outside seating areas.

“We want people to have a place to sit and look at the mountains in the summer, and enjoy a sandwich or ice cream,” Miller said.

Though Mast said the store currently has plenty of storage space in an external warehouse, she said the store itself is “so congested, we don’t have the square footage to stock the product we have.”

Farm to Market store works on the premise that as a religious organization, the Amish community can purchase food from reclaim centers and sell it in their store.

“The food that ends up in reclaim centers comes from big stores like Safeway, who have policies about not selling food which is close to its sell-by date, or food that is damaged in transport — say, a forklift goes through a pallet and they discard the entire pallet even if only part of it is damaged,” Miller said.

The store also stocks food not purchased at reclaim centers, but the appeal for many customers lies in the reclaim food and not knowing what they will find on any given day.

“We order a semi load and we don’t have any idea what will be in it,” Mast said.

Customers have expressed concern that the expansion will mean higher prices, but Mast assures them that the basic business plan, and low prices, will not change.

The new space will mean the store can expand on its current stock, like the seasonal big bins of fruit often on display at the entryway.

The fruit, like the non-perishable reclaim items in store, is often fruit which has been classed as unsellable because of it’s size or shape and is therefore sold by Farm to Market at prices below those at supermarkets.

When Mast and Miller’s 83-year-old father, Ora Miller, started the store in 1994, he paved the way for religious communities statewide to open similar stores.

“Dad won’t stop,” said Mast. “He’s always looking for produce and still trucking to pick it up. The apples are his thing, and this week we sold 900 pounds of cherries in one day after he drove to Washington to get them.”