Bemidji Stores Restocking After Losing Millions Worth of Food from Storm

Many grocers, restaurants, and butcher shops in the area were impacted by the severe storm. The power outages left perishable food unrefrigerated for an extended period of time, causing it to spoil.

Not every business was impacted negatively, and others are rebounding. But as the cost of damage continues to rise in Bemidji, so too does the cost of food that’s gone bad.

“I couldn’t even begin to tell you what it costs us, to be honest,” said Craig Little, president of Lueken’s Village Foods.

Thousands without power over the weekend were forced to throw away perishable food that had spoiled, including at some of the very stores that sell it.

“You lose power for six hours, and you’re worried about losing product,” said Little. “When you lose power for 20 hours, you lose a lot of product.”

The Lueken’s south location was without refrigeration for 22 hours, and their north store for 36 hours. All their perishable product had to be tossed.

“Customers will step around caution tape if it’s on the shelf, so you have to get all of the bad product out of the building before you can reopen,” Little explained. “Now, we’ve been able to reopen all of our locations, and all the product that you see in refrigerated cases is all stuff that we’ve been able to get in and restock since we pulled all of our bad product.”

Restocking the shelves took a small army, one that was also affected by the storm.

“We had, you know, employees with trees on their houses and and they were here trying to get us open,” added Little. “And then once we got open, it was, you know, how do we go help them get out of their houses?”

Stittsworth Meats was able to save most of their food, pulling from experience with the storm in 2012.

“That was a total loss and we learned a few lessons there,” stated owner Myke Stittsworth. “[We] started moving product into walk-in coolers where those will sustain some temperatures for quite a while if you don’t open them.”

With the meat saved, and while many grocers and restaurants were still closed, Stittsworth grilled burgers for hungry doctors, nurses, staff, and patients at local hospitals. He also helped with feeding many of the first responders and power line workers, and even supplied other stores with product.

“There’s local grocery stores in town that they had to throw all their product. So they called and asked if we would replenish them quickly,” he explained. “Yesterday, we made two runs and pushed as much product in as we could, just so they had something to sell to people again.”

Lueken’s shelves are still half empty, but the doors are fully open, and the community is able to fill their fridges once again.

“The goal of the whole recovery effort has been to try to take care of this community. The community is the most important piece,” emphasized Little. “We don’t exist without the community, and we also have to remember that our employees are part of the community, too. And so anything that we can do to help them as well has been equally important.”

Both Lueken’s locations are fully open, deli included, and on Tuesday they were furiously stocking shelves to try and fill them with product by today. Walmart in Bemidji is also back open. Not everything will be in stock right away, so grocers are asking for just a little bit of patience while they get items back on the shelves.