Rural Grocery Spotlight: PrairieLand Market (Salina, Kansas)

PrairieLand Market moved in October to a new space along a newly renovated downtown on Santa Fe Avenue in Salina, KS.

 

Vickee Spicer is the Executive Director at PrairieLand Market. She gave us a tour of their new store and shared the community's passion for supporting local and organic food in Salina, Kansas. Read highlights from our interview with her below.

 

With the new store, what are you excited about? Were you able to expand or add to your offerings?

One of our most significant improvements is having our own kitchen to make foods we can sell and being able to host cooking classes for our customers. Before the new store, we only cooked once a week, on a Monday, at an off-site kitchen. Now, we can use our kitchen daily to make our grab-and-go prepared foods like soups, salads, sandwiches, and family-style meals like lasagnas and potpies. If they do not sell quickly, we mark them down or move them to our freezer section. Right now, our freezer is stocked with quiche, soups, and sweet potato pie.

All our prepared foods are using local ingredients. We support our local farmers because we use seasonal and local meat, produce, and cheese in our recipes. Our focus is to keep it as local and as organic as possible.

The addition of a kitchen allows for teaching classes and making ready to eat products for customers.

The other exciting addition to our store is our space for our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. The CSA has around 66 participants that we are working to build back up to 75 participants. They pay a weekly subscription to receive produce sourced from local farmers. We were able to expand the space for the program to receive produce from our farmers and then distribute it to our customers. We have been able to make this a year-round program because several of the farmers we work with are starting to use high tunnels and hydroponics to have a continuous produce supply.

These are guaranteed weekly customers that our farmers and our store can count on to supply their food. Customers can also add meats, cheeses, eggs, and other products to their order so it will be ready for pick up when they pick up their CSA share.

When customers subscribe, they get an e-mail every Sunday that tells them what produce they will receive, along with recipe suggestions so they can plan their meals. Our staff member makes a video of the recipe and then shares the video online so customers can learn to cook their food.

Do you have more traffic at your new store?

Oh yes, and it happened right away, I thought we would gradually get to the number of customers we have now because our old space was three to four times less than our new space. We are already seeing somewhere between four to five times the number of customers in just four months of being open. We know there is still so much more room for growth, so that is exciting.

What other changes have you made to be able to manage a larger store?

We have been able to make some different improvements between our point-of-sale system and our ability to use a new retailer to supply us with products. As we opened, we started to use Encor through Retail Data Systems (RDS). We are excited to examine our data on when and what people buy. Seeing real data will allow us to evaluate the overall store and the products we carry.

More national brands are on their shelves because of belonging to the Independent Natural Food Retailers Association.

Once we knew our store was growing, we decided to find a retailer to help supply our products. We are not big enough to be a part of the larger cooperatives like Associated Wholesale Grocers (AWG). Still, we were recommended to the Independent Natural Food Retailers Association (INFRA) and became a part of their cooperative. We now get the reduced pricing by being an INFRA member and can pass those savings on to our customers. INFRA has the data on what is selling in the Midwest, which is helpful. Conventional stores have data on trends across the country, and now we have access to that data too.

KeHE became our distributor and was instrumental in helping us set up the store. KeHE did an opening kit to help us set up the layout, shelving, and labeling. All the while, they considered the products that were selling best in our region. It was good to have experts supporting us, so we started off with the best products for our customers.

 

 

 

Market Background

New point of sale technology has been implemented that has allowed them to track consumer purchasing.

Originally founded in 1978 as an organic buyers’ club, it is now a local and organic retail space. The market became a non-profit in 2022 and has been supported by a large community of staff, donors, subscribers, producers, board members, and volunteers. Following their mission, ‘To encourage healthy food choices, provide nutritional food education, and access to local, organic, and craft foods, to promote enhanced well-being for the community.’

PrairieLand Market began a capital campaign of $1.3 million to construct a larger store that offers a complete line of groceries, expanding their Community Supported Agriculture program and including a commercial kitchen. The market moved at the end of October 2024 a couple of blocks over onto Santa Fe, the main Salina downtown street.

More than 30 local farmers and food producers supply PrairieLand Market with Kansas-raised, grown, and made food. Their meat case is almost 100% local meats, and they work directly with ranchers and local meat processors.

The market has received grant and loan funding to assist with the equipment needed in the new store. The Rural Food System Infrastructure grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, allowed them to purchase new equipment for their commercial kitchen. A grant/loan mix from the Kansas Healthy Foods Initiative (KHFI) provided for their high-efficiency refrigeration and storage.

 

Image Gallery

 

  • Image of a check register at PrairieLand Market. Text at the bottom of the image reads: New point of sale technology has been implemented that has allowed them to track consumer purchasing.
  • Picture of an aisle within PrairieLand Market featuring a number of packaged and canned goods. Text at the bottom of the image reads: More national brands are on their shelves because of belonging to the Independent Natural Food Retailers Association.
  • Image of the kitchen at PrairieLand Market. Text at the bottom of the image reads: The addition of a kitchen allows for teaching classes and making ready to eat products for customers.
  • Image of grab and go cases inside PrairieLand Market. Text at the bottom of the image reads: Grab and go cases have fresh salads and sandwiches. They also have a heated case for their warm food, like rotisserie chicken.
  • Image of quiche. Text at the bottom of the image reads: With the new kitchen the store has been able to add ready-to-eat products including quiches, soups, and casseroles.
  • Image of prepackaged bulk foods laid on top of an image of bulk food in bins, both inside PrairieLand Market. Text at the bottom of the image reads: Bulk foods are available at the store, with top-sellers in bins and others prepackaged to save space.
  • Image of Kansas made products including honey, sauerkraut, and more on the shelves at PrairieLand Market. Text at the bottom of the image reads: The store has dedicated shelves carrying Kansas made products. They are always looking for more products to carry.
  • Image of a water refill station next to produce inside PrairieLand Market. Text at the bottom of the image reads: The reverse osmosis water refill station has proven to be a valuable financial asset. The produce section features both local fruits and vegetables as well as those not available in the area.
  • Image of a deli case inside PrairieLand Market. Text at the bottom of the image reads: Additional deli case space was added to hold local and national food brands.

 

*Brand names appearing in this article are for product identification purposes only. No endorsement is intended, nor is criticism implied of similar products not mentioned.