BLACKFEET: Stocking the Aisles

...Although Glacier Family Foods adds 56 new employees to the Blackfeet Reservation’s year-round workforce, the people behind the store’s creation hope it will do much more than create immediate jobs. For the last 20 years, members of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council and the community bounced around the idea of opening a tribally owned grocery store to attract other businesses. It only came to fruition after the Siyeh Corporation, the business arm of the Blackfeet tribe, took on the project. In 2010, the Siyeh Corporation conducted a market analysis that confirmed the Browning community and the Blackfeet Reservation could support a second grocery store (Browning’s long-standing Teeple’s IGA is the first) as well as the competition it would bring to the market. Josh Embody was out of work for a year before he landed a job at Glacier Family Foods. Embody said he looks forward to being able to help pay bills at home. Competitively driven prices at the local grocery stores could entice more people to shop on the reservation, stemming the flow of traffic – and the flow of money – to outside towns like Cut Bank, Kalispell and Great Falls. For many people on the Blackfeet Reservation in northwestern Montana, Glacier Family Foods is a sign that things might be looking up...