Grand Prairie Foods adds another location amid pandemic pivot
Jan. 18, 2021
If you had asked Kurt Loudenback a year ago what was driving business at Grand Prairie Foods, it would have been scrambled egg and potato entrees for hotel breakfasts and buffets.
“That was 80 percent of our volume,” said Loudenback, CEO of the Sioux Falls-based food company.
Then, the pandemic turned the business upside down.
Any hotels that were buying definitely weren’t providing communal breakfast stations and buffets.
“In April, our business was down 80 percent from January just because of the hospitality business disappearing,” Loudenback said.
Kurt Loudenback in 2018
So Grand Prairie pivoted in a big way – and it paid off.
Now, the company is cranking out 500,000 to 600,000 sandwiches each week – mostly breakfast, with some lunch.
It has picked up several new co-pack customers to the point where it’s now at capacity at its east Sioux Falls facility.
And it just secured 15 acres in the northeast Sioux Falls Development Foundation Park VIII that immediately will address warehouse needs and position Grand Prairie for what once again looks like a promising future.
“We’ve got quite a bit of organic growth with our existing customers,” Loudenback said. “Hilton, for example, was our largest consumer of eggs, and now they’re our largest consumer of sandwiches because they switched to a sandwich program from a buffet.”
The new warehouse, which was US Foods until the company consolidated operations out of the area, will give Grand Prairie Foods 50,000 square feet, split among freezer, cooler and dry warehouse space as well as some office space.
For the past 18 months, the company has been hauling inventory back and forth to a warehouse in Sioux City, “so it’s a nice fit for our business to be able to consolidate a lot of food inventory in one location,” Loudenback said.
The extra land could be used if the company decides to expand production at some point, he added.
Grand Prairie’s latest pivot to success is a reflection of its DNA.
Its roots are in an acquisition of another food manufacturing business in the early 2000s. Shortly after the purchase, Loudenback had to cease operations after finding out the plant had a history of listeria, said investor Gene McGowan, founder of McGowan Capital Group.
His two largest customers “never came back, so that was Kurt’s start to business in Sioux Falls — talking about whether it’d be better to declare bankruptcy or try and fund your way out of that,” McGowan said.
They prayed about it, invested more as needed and got to the point where Grand Prairie could begin to fund its own growth.
Loundenback “is a star,” McGowan said. “He’s just a great guy. We’ve had a really wonderful working relationship through it all. He has a lot of talent in marketing and sales and management, and the people we do business with at Grand Prairie Foods trust him. He makes a good deal, and he delivers. Customers he’s brought to the table don’t go away. They just get bigger.”
Commensurately, Grand Prairie Foods is getting bigger too. It has reached nearly 300 employees, including many recent hires.
Grand Prairie Foods in 2018
“Our business is picking up so much we’ve added 70 more people,” Loudenback said. “Everybody wants individually wrapped stuff now. We started a co-packer producing sandwiches for us … because there’s so much demand for our sandwiches.”
He gives credit for hiring to his wife, Valerie, who does all of it.
“We have not had any problems getting people hired,” he said. “(She) seems to be dialed in to the right people, and when we need to hire people, she finds them, and that’s gone really well. I’m a little surprised by that in this environment.”
While the business navigated through some COVID-19 cases especially during the Smithfield outbreak, it has managed through with a full-time mask policy, daily temperature checks and sending anyone home who isn’t feeling well.
“What they have done and the reputation they have in the immigrant community – they trust them,” McGowan said. “It’s some really fine work that’s been done over there.”
Each year, Loudenback chooses a single word to define the company’s focus. In this case, they’re especially telling.
For 2020, it was “survival.”
For 2021, it’s “success.”
