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Making Sustainability Delicious in Glacier Park
Xanterra Parks and Resorts focuses on serving local food and beverage products to thousands
Glacier National Park Lodges executive chef Jim Chapman, left, and Jeremiah Hook, director of food and beverages.
CBY MOLLY PRIDDY OF THE BEACON
OLUMBIA FALLS – THINK OF
Glacier National Park, with its
million-acre range of wild and raw topography, and imagine it as a stage: mil- lions of people owing in and out, mostly in a three-month time span, looking, hik- ing, exploring, camping, and, inevitably, eating and drinking.
For Chef James Chapman, the execu- tive chef for Xanterra Parks and Resorts, summer in Glacier Park is when the restaurants within the park's boundaries feature his menus and his sta for about 350,000 visitors.
Feeding hundreds of thousands of peo- ple in 90 to 120 days is challenge enough, but Xanterra has added to its own chal- lenge through the practice of seeking more sustainable options for nearly everything on the menu.
"We're pretty proud of our company," Chapman said.
When Xanterra took over as the con- cessionaire for the park in 2014, Chap- man, along with Food and Beverage Director Jeremiah Hook, made a push
for not only for sustainable products, but local food and drinks as well.
"We're able to get into the 60 per- cent-range of our spirit sales being sus- tainable," Hook said.
Not only does selling local products help buoy the surrounding economy, Hook said, but they've also found that local sells. When it came to whiskey sales last year, Glacier's restaurants and lounges sold about 170 bottles worth of the big, national brands, compared to 490 bottles in local booze.
The company spent $1 million in sustainable purchases in 2015, with $675,000 of that in local food and bever- age purchases. Fifty-nine percent of the food purchases were sustainable, along with 92.1 percent of the beverages.
Local food suppliers include the West- ern Montana Grower's Co-op, Birch Creek Colony, Montana Co ee Traders, Flathead Lake Cheese, Life Line Farm, Cream of the West, and many more.
If a producer can't be found in the Flat- head, Chapman and Hook rst search the state. For example, they started using Tumblewood Teas, based in Big Timber,
and now the tea company has doubled its sta by adding two full-time jobs to keep up with the demand.
Flathead Lake Brewing Company cre- ated Lone Walker Ale speci cally for the Glacier lodges, and it became the third-high- est selling beer in the park last year.
Chapman said he found Wagyu beef through KMC Ranches, in White sh and Columbia Falls, and purchased one head of beef last year, but increased the order to three heads, and this year, the menu will feature the KMC Ranch label.
"We feel Glacier National Park is a stage, and is an opportunity to showcase these products," Hook said.
And once a local, sustainable prod- uct hits the menu, it's likely going to stay there, instead of changing up the menu each year and shu ing local products out.
"When we've got a good product that's local and sustainable, we're going to stick with it," Chapman said.
Most of the restaurants run by Xan- terra are members of the Western Sus- tainability Exchange, which is dedicated to local sourcing, and Hook and Chapman said their doors are open for more local
vendors to pitch their products.
This year, one of the major changes will be using meat and seafood that is delivered fresh, never frozen. Xanterra is also refur- bishing and rebranding the Swiftcurrent Motor Inn's restaurant to 'Nell's, as a trib- ute to George Bird Grinnell. It will serve classic fare like Reuben sandwiches, but the beef will be grass-fed from Montana, the sauerkraut will be from nearby Hut- terite colonies, and the bread will be local. Hook also took some of the old pine boards removed during the Village Inn refurbishment project and made them into the new menu boards for Swiss and Lucke's lounges. Xanterra also recycles glass, using 70,000 pounds of it in the new transportation and engineering building
housing the park's buses.
Maintaining a focus on sustainability
on such a large level presents challenges, Hook said, but the company believes it is worth it. And both men said their work so far is merely the beginning.
"We've got 13 years in our contract left," Chapman said. "Who knows where this is going to grow?"
mpriddy@ atheadbeacon.com
FEBRUARY 10, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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