Allison Wagner, Director of Houston County EDA and Small Cities Development Program Specialist at CEDA, works to promote local businesses in southeastern Minnesota. When asked who I should interview for my project, she mentioned Sno Pac Foods in Caledonia, MN. “Pete, the owner of the company, is the coolest, most down-to-earth guy. He is very willing to share his story,” she told me. She was right. I interviewed Pete Gengler on September 9, 2020.
This piece is part of a larger project to document the culinary resilience of southeastern Minnesota’s Houston County during the pandemic. You can read more about my Crystal Creek Citizen-Artist Residency project here.
Pete Gengler was on an Amtrak train bound for a trade show in Anaheim, California when he got the call. Expo West 2020 had just been cancelled due to COVID-19. Pete had to turn around. “That’s when it started to sink in,” Pete tells me.
As it turned out, a coworker Pete planned to meet at the show developed virus symptoms at the exact time they would have been working together at the Sno Pac Foods exhibit booth. “Things really started to roll after that,” Pete says. This was the first week of March.
A few weeks earlier, Pete heard some “scuttlebutt” about COVID-19 at the MOSES Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, WI. People were debating which companies might still go to the expo in Anaheim. At that time, Pete still planned to attend. It’s a good show for them, and he wasn’t yet convinced the Coronavirus was something to fear. He admits that maybe he should have known, since even then, in late February, people were bumping elbows instead of shaking hands.
Pete Gengler is President of Sno Pac Foods, a fourth generation certified organic grower and processor of frozen fruits and vegetables based in Caledonia, MN. Nearly everything they sell is grown locally on their 3,000 acres or through contract farmers, except a couple of location-specific items like cranberries from Wisconsin.
Their product line ranges from staples like Organic Peas and Organic Sliced Carrots to Organic Midwest Soup Mix and Organic Soycutash. Pete tells me he sees other companies using the phrase Organic Before Organic was Cool, but he first used it many years ago to describe the Sno Pac Foods mission.
Sno Pac Foods began as a Gengler family ice-harvesting operation in the early 1900s, and is now a national brand and supplier to co-ops and grocery stores across the country. Luther College in Decorah, IA, just 32 miles down the road from Caledonia, receives 1-2 pallets from Sno Pac Foods a month as part of their sustainable foods initiative. Sno Pac products can also be found at the Oneota Community Food Co-Op, my local grocer, where I buy their bulk blueberries and frozen green vegetables.
Bulk Blueberries from Sno Pac Foods
I ask Pete about the initial pandemic boom. “Sales went through the roof!” he tells me. “People were taking twice as much as normal so there was lag time in trying to figure out how to keep the shelves stocked. Like the toilet paper thing,” he notes. “People are good at panicking,” he adds. I agreed, admitting how I stocked up on Sno Pac’s Organic Green Peas when the days of quarantine began.
“Sales went up across the board,” Pete replies. “Peas are our bestseller and so they were flying out of here. Everything increased proportionately.” He thinks their story isn’t much different from what other suppliers experienced in the early days of the pandemic.
Sno Pac Foods limited some bulk product orders from manufacturers so they could continue supplying all retail customers during the rush. “That’s because we came out of a year where we had poor crops on a lot of items,” Pete says.
Pete says this is the wildest thing he’s seen in many years at Sno Pac Foods.
Sno Pac Foods is an exemplary model of safe COVID-19 practices. As part of the food industry, the plant was already hyperconscious of food safety and sanitizing, but doorknobs and surface areas now receive extra cleaning and sanitization has increased. When the pandemic hit, all 50 employees started wearing masks.
Pete tells me they developed new protocol with help from the MN Department of Agriculture. They split the plant in half, separating the packing crew from processing and office personnel, so if something happens it won’t take down the whole operation and at least half the team can still work. They created a safe space for transferring supplies and paperwork to avoid cross-contamination between areas of the plant, and they restricted visitors.
At the time of our interview, Sno Pac Foods hasn’t had any employees test positive. So far, they’ve asked about 6-8 people to stay home after being in contact with somebody who was exposed to someone with the virus. “We err on the side of caution. When I ask an employee to stay home, I compensate them for the days at home. I don’t want somebody coming to work because they may lose a paycheck and take a chance at infecting the plant,” Pete says.
Pete continues, “It’s not over yet. We’re pretty lucky here in Caledonia. There’s been almost nothing in Houston County up until the last two months or so. I’m not sure what the number is right now, but we went up from 2 or 3 or 4 cases in the first few months to now in the 60s-70s.”
“I don’t see it going away very fast,” Pete says as we end our conversation.
We are lucky to have a nationally-recognized producer of certified organic fruits and vegetables right in Caledonia, a testament to the rich soil of Houston County and the greater Driftless region. Sno Pac Foods is an inspiring example of growth despite a changing market, and their ability to successfully navigate the challenges of the pandemic further confirms their excellence.
Elisabeth A. Fondell is a writer, potter, and food enthusiast living in the rural Midwest. She is currently working on Food Stories From Houston County, a project documenting stories of culinary resilience in Minnesota’s southeastern-most county through the Crystal Creek Citizen-Artist Residency.
Elisabeth began focusing on place-based food writing after receiving a grant from the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council to create a body of work celebrating the intersection of food and culture. See that exhibit here.
