Page 33 - Flathead Beacon // 9.16.15

“The farm-to-fork movement is so huge right now, and it’s catching on here. This is the
TRANSACTIONS
WEEKLY BUSINESS BRIEFING
COLD STONE CREAMERY CELEBRATES FIVE YEARS
Locally owned and oper- ated ice cream shop Cold Stone Creamery celebrates five years in Kalispell this month.
Owner Nicole Buckallew and her family invited the commu- nity to join them for an anniver- sary celebration on Sept. 12.
Since opening in 2010, Kalis-
pell Cold Stone Creamery has
donated over $12,500 in products
and $10,000 cash to local organi-
zations, including Kalispell Pub-
lic Schools and Flathead County Deputy Sheriff’s Association.
Buckallew also hosts periodic fundraiser days, during which a per- centage of the day’s proceeds are donated to a local organization in need. Most recently, the shop offered free ice cream to any firefighter last month.
A 2004 Flathead High School graduate, Buckallew received her bach- elor’s degree in Business Administration from The University of Mon- tana before returning to the Flathead Valley.
Opening, moving or expanding a business in Northwest Montana? If you would like to be featured in “Transactions,” please email information to [email protected]
scraps-to-soil part.”
- RACHEL GERBER
to include more restaurants on their pick-up schedules, places that would prefer to keep as much refuse out of the landfill as possible.
They’re also opening up the service to home pickup in Columbia Falls and Whitefish, giving customers a five-gal- lon bucket with a new compostable bag each week and then picking that bucket up for the customer, for $20 each month. Commercial prices would vary, depend- ing on sheer amount, Gerber said.
A big part of participation in these cases is training people to become con- sistent with their scraps, the way recy- cling programs try to get people into a habit, like taking out the garbage.
“I think people want to make respon- sible decisions with their food waste,” LaChance said. “But the infrastructure wasn’t in place. It’s just way easier to throw it away.”
Friends since their Whitefish child- hoods, LaChance, 25, and Gerber, 25, decided to pursue DIRT Rich full time after Gerber’s personal efforts to collect residential food scraps from friends and others in Whitefish started to catch on.
Gerber pulls on her experience of nine years in the restaurant industry and five years working on a farm, while
LaChance brings a background with an environmental studies degree, focused on sustainable agriculture.
Not only does DIRT Rich take food scraps, but lawn cuttings – including branches – manure, leaves, sawdust, moldy hay, and other organic material that would otherwise end up inciner- ated or trashed.
Now detritus is recycled into com- post, which Gerber and LaChance expect will be ready in the spring and available for purchase. They could make it available sooner, but that would mean speeding up the curing process, which would make the compost less rich and effective, they said.
Anyone seeking to drop off their yard waste can call DIRT Rich for the access code to the gate on their 200-feet-by- 270-feet compost yard, thereby avoid- ing people who would seek to merely dump their trash.
At this point, the business model has worked, LaChance and Gerber said.
“So far it’s been really awesome,” Gerber said.
For more information on DIRT Rich, call 406-212-7535 or visit the Facebook
page.
IT’S BACK!
ALL YOU CAN EAT
SHRIMP!
MONDAY - THURSDAY AFTER 4PM SUNDAYS ALL DAY
[email protected]
MONGOLIAN GRILL
SEPTEMBER 16, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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