Longtime Palmer feed store moves

PALMER — Budget Feed and Farm, for many years the only spot in the Valley to buy locally milled and mixed feed for livestock and pets, has moved from its spot on the edge of Palmer’s downtown and the owner is considering reshaping the business.

Owner Mike Presley said Budget Feed opened at its new Outer Springer Loop location Oct. 11. The move was prompted by a variety of things, he said, but a shifting economy and complicated business regulations top the list.

Presley said he had been submitting information for workers’ compensation for a few years and had been through annual audits successfully.

But recently, an audit raised a red flag and Presley was told he hadn’t provided the proper workers’ compensation code and would not only be on the hook to pay for the mistake, he’d have to pay higher compensation rates in the future.

“I hadn’t changed anything,” he said about the way he did business from one year to the next.

So the penalty and higher rates led Presley to rethink his business model. Some of his products have been milled off-site already due to equipment issues. After penciling it out, he realized it would be cheaper to contract out all the milling.

“Once I made the decision that we weren’t going to mill anymore, I didn’t need as big a building for the manufacturing equipment,” he said.

The business moved from its 1100 S. Colony Way location to one of a relatively new string of shops off Springer.

The new spot is at 301 E. Outer Springer, Suite B4.

A Palmer institution,

driven by good 4-H results

The move is a first for Budget Feed in its 37-year history. Started at the red barn-like building on Colony Way by Bob Thom in 1973, the business was one of only four Alaska feed manufacturers.

Alaska Garden and Pet in Anchorage and a manufacturer in Delta Junction were the two others operating at the time, Thom said. The other was Mat Maid, which milled feed in Palmer, but used outdated machinery that Thom, whose business was originally farm equipment repair, was often called on to fix.

Budget Feed was the first to focus on incorporating Alaska products such as fishmeal and barley. Thom said he gathered information from other countries where fish and grains were used to make animal feed. University of Alaska Fairbanks employees did some research, he said, but the real trial and error was done the old fashioned way — it was tested on animals his kids raised for 4-H, Thom said.

Thom said his food gained popularity among the show-dog set, which swore that his salmon meal, barley and potato pellets made their dogs’ coats extra shiny. Mushers realized the benefits of feeding their dogs fish meal, not only a shiny coat, but for some dogs it provided a burst of energy in the final stretch of long sled dog races. Thom recalled one musher for whom the fish powder he sold was a secret weapon.

“They’d carry it on the sled and about halfway through, the dogs would need a burst of energy,” he said

The musher would sprinkle it on their food and it revved the dogs up for a strong finish, he said.

More changes may come

Presley said the Alaska Grown dog food is one of his top sellers today. He still makes it the same way, with Kodiak fishmeal, Delta barley and Palmer potatoes. He recently branched out and began selling it wholesale to other stores: Alaska Mill and Feed in Anchorage; Steve’s Food Boy in Big Lake; Cubby’s in Talkeetna; Omni Park’s Place in Glennallen and Ri-Generation Nutrition, an Eagle River health food store.

A health food store? Presley said it’s actually an ideal spot — people who shop there are interested in buying healthy food for themselves and their pets.

While the dog food market is surging enough to make Presley consider eliminating the retail side of his business and stick solely with milling Alaska Grown feed. Retail sales have fallen in the past year, Presley said, and demand for livestock feed is down to the point that Presley stopped producing it because he couldn’t keep it fresh enough to meet his standards.

Presley said he believes the constant media attention to the poor economy is making even people whose incomes have not changed reluctant to spend.

“People keep hearing bad news and they react to bad news,” he said. “They say, ‘We can buy our beef in the store, we don’t need to be raising our own.’”

Presley said he sees the current, smaller store as a stopgap solution. Long term, he said he’s looking for another location that has a little more room or perhaps changing the business to focus more on wholesale.

Future dance hall?

Thom, who owns the barn that previously housed Budget Feed and Farm, is looking for tenants, but he’s not making any guesses as to what the old barn might become.

“I was approached by some people for a nonalcoholic dance hall,” Thom said.

There have been other ideas: indoor dog park or perhaps partitioning the building so different tenants could use the front as retail and the back as a shop.

For now, Christmas tree seller Duane Clark is offering trees there, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday.