Mountain Meadow Herbs Celebrates 20 Years

Since local Flathead Valley resident Kathy Garber began producing herbal supplements out of her garage more than 20 years ago, starting Mountain Meadow Herbs, the company has grown to produce more than 80 products with almost 40 employees in Somers.

Mountain Meadow Herbs manufactures liquid herbal supplements for a wide range of health benefits like immune and sleep support but is primarily focused on fertility, birthing and women’s health.

“Our sweet spot is in liquid herbal supplements,” said Andrew Escalante, the company’s chief executive officer and chief growth officer. “That’s how it all got started.”

As a member of the Amish and Mennonite community, whose culture emphasizes natural remedies, Garber, who is now retired, began creating herbal supplements to help her son’s kidney infections in the 1990s and she later expanded to make a variety of products with raw materials like ashwagandha, Echinacea and horsetail.

For the last few decades, the products have mostly been marketed for the Plain communities, or people who identify as Amish, Hutterites and Mennonites.

But in the last few years, Escalante has been working to expand Mountain Meadow Herbs beyond that demographic, where 70% of business goes.

“The opportunity to expand beyond our traditional market is extremely important to us,” Escalante said. “We have some big families who are very supportive to our brand, but we also have the opportunity to grow beyond that.”

At the manufacturing facility, which can be seen from Highway 82 in Somers, raw materials are shipped mostly from areas in Montana, like hemp from Dayton. Some of it is imported from Asia. Materials are tested for microbes and toxins before heading to cookers where the raw ingredients are broken down with glycerin and alcohol to get to their concentrated form.

Once only the essential ingredients are left, the materials are mixed together and remain in liquid form as opposed to capsules, and they are bottled, labeled and shipped across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America and Singapore.

In an effort to expand further, Escalante started distributing the products on Amazon, which he says has been successful so far.

Mountain Meadow Herbs also manufactures for third parties who have their own brands and formulas.

While workforce challenges pose issues for the company, Escalante says Mountain Meadow Herbs has high quality employees, giving them a competitive advantage and he feels fortunate to be able to manufacture products that are shipped across the world from the Flathead Valley.

Since the pandemic began, Escalante says supply chain disruptions have impacted the company’s prices and availability as shipping, raw material and bottling prices have all spiked.

“We did really well with COVID when everybody became health conscious,” Escalante said. “That was good for us, but now COVID supply chain issues aren’t as fun to deal with and we’re seeing a lot of raw ingredient prices increasing.”

Prices for ashwagandha, a shrub grown in India, have spiked 300%, Escalante said.

As part of Mountain Meadow Herb’s expansion, Escalante has started growing herbs like lavender, rosemary and Echinacea on 20 acres next to the manufacturing facility and they plan to grow vertically indoors to prolong the season.

Escalante is also collaborating with a local artist to paint a mural on the building’s west side and he’s working on improving signage to advertise the coffee shop they opened in the facility two years ago, which currently operates five days a week selling coffee, tea and baked goods, with plans to bake bagels in the future.

For more information, visit www.mmherbs.com.