Organics employees l to r: Kaitlyn Cook, Jasmine Hodgeman, Adam McDougle, and Ed Krenelka.
Big Sandy Organics has experienced a growth spurt over the last few years. Big Sandy residents have certainly noticed the facility expansions as the organization has grown. In November of 2020, Thomas and Heather Dilworth purchased the company from Bob Quinn.
Heather explained that the first big contract they landed came to them right off the bat: "Right after we bought the business, we had a company named Snack Nation contact us. They send boxes of snacks and goodies to homes. It's a subscription box where you can get all different kinds of snacks. They contacted us and asked us if we would be willing to be in one of their subscription boxes. And we said, 'Sure.' They placed this really large order, one of the largest orders we'd ever had at the time, right after we bought the business. That was a major blessing, because we weren't sure how things were going to go when we started doing a lot more volume. This was the time to test the limits and see how well we could do. We finished that order at the end of January or beginning of February of 2021. It was a large order... 10 times more than what we were doing in a normal month. So that was kind of fun."
The initial burst of business activity was followed shortly afterward by another significant connection with a "...really large company called Young Living, out of Salt Lake City. They sell essential oils. And they're a big homeopathic type company. They had gotten a hold of our Kracklin Kamut through another distributor that we had selling it there in Utah called the Food Nanny. They got ahold of us and said, 'we've tried your Kracklin Kamut and it's delicious! We love it! We grow lavender and our rotational crop is Einkorn wheat. And we were wondering, if you would be willing to try and experiment with our Einkorn in the same way you have your Kracklin Kamut or maybe try different oils or salt.' We started making that snack for them. It took probably about six months for us to get everything finalized.
They LOVE the snack we made for them!. They thought it was so delicious. They wanted to use a different oil than the safflower oil. And so we used a different oil for them." Young Living also tinkered with the salts they were using and launch dates. Ultimately, they placed a massive order. It was five semi trucks full of product. The most we'd ever done was one full semi truck load. And so that was a huge jump for us."
The growth in business has pushed Big Sandy Organics to expand more than just their facility. When the Dilworths bought the company, they employed 4 full time workers and 3 part time employees. Over the past two years their staff has grown to 11 full timers and 1 or 2 part time workers. "We've really added some jobs here in Big Sandy, which is kind of exciting..."
"Young Living has made us now their exclusive producer for this snack, which is very cool. They want to see how this next year goes, and see if we can keep up with their volume. If it goes well, they want to start introducing the snack to other stores at that point. One cool thing about Young Living is that they're an international company. They sell all over the world, so that's gives us great exposure. We still sell quite a bit of Kracklin Kamut, too. It's growing all the time. But the Young Living deal has just been a game changer for us." Along with the larger contracts, Big Sandy Organics has also added a number of small contracts cooking lentils, barley and other snack products.
With the game-changing growth at Big Sandy Organics, the need to expand the facility has moved to the forefront. "We've added a lot of space. I'm not actually sure what the square footage is right now with all the additions. We've turned our old house over there, the little modular home, into an office. We have a full time office manager there now helping us with everything. Honestly, it has just blessed our lives. Now our biggest goal is to just keep Young Living happy and just grow. This contract has opened up a lot of doors for us to be able to hire employees and hopefully build a new facility in the near future... It's a lot of things that we didn't expect to see for five or ten years down the road, so it's been really exciting."
With the rapid growth of the business, building a new facility is near the forefront of concerns for Big Sandy organics. "We're actually currently looking for property, a place to build a new facility, because in about about one year we'll outgrow our current facility. We won't be able to keep growing if we don't expand. Right now, if you've seen the shop, we've done two additions and added four storage containers to hold grain, oil, and all of our supplies." The expansion of the business has prompted the company to begin purchasing supplies in bulk, which creates the need for more storage space. In addition, the company is looking to purchase equipment upgrades to make their operation more efficient and faster, like a new boiler pot that will make it possible to cook 1000 lbs more grain per hour than they are currently doing.
In all of the excitement of new growth, Heather repeatedly expressed her intent to invest in our community and encourage growth. Adding jobs and bringing more commerce into our town was prominent in our discussion: "I really liking Big Sandy, and I really love Montana. My husband's vision was 'We need to keep jobs here. We need to keep people employed. We need to be able to keep our grocery store. I mean, he wants to see the community thrive. Our goal is to support our community however we can." Through the growth of their business and its contribution to our local economy, the Dillworths and Big Sandy Organics are making a real difference in our town.
