Heather Hill Farms launches wholesale division

“We are a retail cheese, wine, gourmet foods and gift shop,” said Vice President Robert Alder, of the business he and his wife, Heather, the president, founded in 2002. Their daughter Emily, 15, also helps in the store, which employs 15.

“Seven days a week, you can come in here and taste about 80 varieties of cheese … and we have wine out for tasting,” Robert Alder said. “We are not a grocery store. Most of what we have here, you cannot buy in a grocery store. … There are very few places that you can walk into and taste what you’re going to buy.”

Heather Hill Farms carries the full line of Osceola cheeses – about 100 varieties – and is one of only two places that offers taste tests of the full line of St. James Winery wines. In early June, St. James Winery presented Heather Hill Farms with its 2005 Independent Retailer of the Year Award.

Heather Hill Farms also carries wines from California, Europe and Australia, but in addition to the wine and cheese, there’s an eclectic mix of gourmet foods available, including salsas, chip dips and Amish canned goods from Ohio.

“There’s no additives or preservatives,” Alder said of the Amish goods. “They’re all very naturally canned, just like our grandmas did.”

Homegrown

Heather Hill Farms offers as many Missouri products as possible. There is Mighty Mo Munchies, a soybean snack produced in the town of Oregon; other Missouri wine labels, including Hermannhof from Hermann, Mt. Pleasant from Augusta, and Stone Hill from Hermann and Branson; Ozark Mountain Coffee from Ozark; and the cheese from Osceola.

On the weekends, in addition to cheese and wine, there are gourmet food tastings, featuring fresh breads from Springfield-based Waves of Grain, owned by Philip Dreshfield. Sometimes, the bread is made with Heather Hill Farms cheese.

“I figure we have the main food groups covered – cheese, wine and bread,” Alder joked.

Cash-and-carry wholesale

Now, the Alders are helping similar stores carry similar products, having launched a cash-and-carry wholesale division in January.

“We have basically developed a really unique inventory of gourmet foods, and we are selling them to a lot of other smaller stores that don’t get the service that big stores get from big food purveyors,” Alder said.

Retail is still the majority of the business at Heather Hill Farmss, but Alder said the venture into wholesale has gone well.

“We had requests from stores who would come in here and say, ‘Can we carry your goods?’” he said, noting that many of the products are private-label and carry the Heather Hills name. “Before long, we’ll probably be 60 percent Heather Hill Farms brand goods, and they are available to be sold in other stores.”

It wasn’t just stores that urged the Alders to get into the wholesale business, though.

Some of the vendors also asked if Heather Hill Farms would be willing to work with smaller stores to get their products on the shelves.

Once the Alders decided to go that route, they hired Dennis George to lead the wholesale division. George and Alder have known each other for more than 20 years and have always wanted to work together.

George handled advertising and promotions for Associated Wholesale Grocers for about 12 years in Springfield and worked as a corporate director with AWG in Colorado.

George said he’s working with about 12 active wholesale customers throughout southwest Missouri and in Oklahoma.

Gourmet Paw Barkery & Flea Market LLC carries several Heather Hill Farms products, including Amish canned goods, pickled eggs and garlic, sorghum and corn relish, according to Pat Johnson, co-owner of the Galloway Village store.

“We take jams, butter, hot salsa and pineapple salsa,” also from Heather Hill, she said.

Johnson said she’s been carrying Heather Hill goods for just a few months, but they’re doing well considering that her store has limited foot traffic.

As the wholesale volume grows, Heather Hill may consider doing its own deliveries, George said, provided that it won’t result in higher prices or lower profits.

From publishing to cheese

The Alders previously operated Alliance Press, which published magazines including All Roads Lead to Branson and Country Heart.

“Through that company and my relationships with Osceola Cheese in Osceola, we started talking about the possibility of opening a store down this way,” Robert Alder said. “We discussed it for seven years – I’ve never been one to make quick decisions – and finally, when we sold that publishing company, my wife and I looked at each other and said, ‘What are we going to do now?’”

They decided it was time to open the cheese store they’d been talking about – and Heather Hill Farms has grown from there.

Originally, the couple wanted to open shop in Springfield, but as it turns out, their close proximity to Lambert’s is a perfect fit.

“It’s on the way to Branson … and when (Lambert’s) gets busy, we become kind of a waiting place,” Alder said. “Some weekends, Lambert’s is an hour or two-hour wait, and because Lambert’s does such a wonderful job, people will wait that long. But they want something to do.”

The location affords a fair amount of tourist business, but Alder said, “Our biggest month is December, and it is void of any tourist business to speak of, and it’s twice as big as any other month. We sell a lot of cheese boxes … a lot of cheese and wine baskets.”

Alder declined to discuss revenues, other than to say “the store has been profitable from its first year, which is very unusual according to my accountant.”

Now that they’ve launched the wholesale division, Alder said he and his wife are investigating other possible store locations, “but nothing we want to reveal yet.”

Heather Hill Farms

Founded: 2002

Owners: Heather and Robert Alder

Address: 5255 N. 17th St., Ozark, MO 65721

Phone: (417) 581-7665

Fax: (417) 581-7666

Web site: www.heatherhillfarms.com

Employees: 15, 3 full time [[In-content Ad]]