Hi-Line Living - Streatery: Organic through and through

In the beginning of 2018 when Havreite Sarah Manuel started the Streatery, from it’s first day, local, organic food has been a priority of the business.

“I would rather have it be tons of extra work to source things locally and source things organically to make sure the quality is there, rather than lowering the standards just to keep the business going,” Manuel said. “Because at that, the mission is gone, and you can’t have a successful business without a solid mission.”

Manuel said that she grew up on a farm just south of Havre, Prairie Grass Ranch, which is an organic farm.

“I knew what we were producing was really high-quality, but I saw a lot of it leaving the state and even the country and saw a lot of lesser-quality things being shipped in because it was cheaper,” she said. “To me that just didn’t seem right.”

She knew she wanted to change that, she said, and that was when she became interested in pursuing culinary arts, and using those skills to promote local agriculture the best way she could.

Prairie Grass Ranch was not always organic, Manuel added. When she was a young girl, her mother was diagnosed with Grave’s disease, an autoimmune disorder. A doctor told her that, although treatable, the disease had no cure.

Manuel said that her mother wasn’t willing to accept the diagnosis and decided to research diets which could help her conditions — her mother is what inspired the transition to organic for her family. After years of transition work, the ranch became fully organic in 2007, and after her mother’s commitment to her change of diet, her mother cured herself of her illness.

“It’s something that the doctors told us was not possible,” she said. “It just says a lot for what you put in your body matters and food can heal you.”

Her mother’s experience is what made her passionate about keeping her food good quality, she said, because she doesn’t want to make people sick.

“I don’t want to contribute to a larger problem,” Manuel said. “I want to contribute to the solution.

Non-organic food can have harsh side effects, not only to the consumer but also to the farmer or ranchers who are using the chemicals needed, she said.

“That is something that I never wanted my family to go through,” she added.

Cooking by necessity

She first got into cooking out of necessity, having five younger siblings, Manuel said.

One of her earliest memories of cooking was when she was 13 years old, her mother handed her a cookbook and asked her to make a cheesecake. The cheesecake she made turned out good, and she found she had a knack for the craft. Her making this cheesecake became a gateway for her and during high school she began selling baked items at the local farmers market.

After graduating from high school, she said, she was torn, between culinary arts and pursuing science. Manuel chose culinary arts, she said, because cooking allows her to exercise her artistic side while still pursuing the technical side of the craft. In 2016 she graduated from the Culinary Institute of Montana in Kalispell.

After graduating she went to work in Maui, Manuel said, doing a work trade program and doing some farm-to-table work. She said that those experiences got her thinking about the future. In Maui, local organic food is easier to find because it is in such high demand and she wanted to see how she could take the idea back to Montana.

In 2017 she returned to Havre, she said, working on her family’s ranch. One project she worked on was developing a distribution line for her family’s ranch to get the meat they produced sold more localized in Montana.

She started Prairie Grass Meats, but one of the things she needed for the distribution was a walk-in freezer, so she went to Bear Paw Development Corp. for assistance applying for a grant to fund the freezer.

She got the grant, she said, and during the process, she heard Triple Dog Brewing Co. had a non-functioning food truck.

The Streatery

Michael Garrity, who owns Triple Dog with his wife, Erin, said he always wanted to have a food truck for the brewery and Manuel was a great addition.

Manuel said she contacted the Garritys to see if they were interested and in only a few months they had a logo, menu and marketing all put together for Streatery.

Streatery started with as much organic ingredients as possible, she said. Getting organic and local ingredients sourced was a challenge in a rural area like Havre’s, she said, because many organic distributors did not deliver to Havre. Last year, Manuel had to drive to Great Falls to pick up her order of organic ingredients from Quality Foods, a Bozeman-based distributor mostly dealing with organic Montana products. She added that recently the distributor started delivering to Havre.

Manuel said that all of the beef and the majority of the pork she serves is from her family’s ranch. The bread and tortillas are also organic. She said she makes the tortillas herself using organic Montanan flour and has Grateful Bread make her bread using the same kind of flour.

The cheese she uses is from Life Line Farms, in Victor, which is certified organic, she said, adding that, recently, she was able to tour the facility. Manuel said she wants eventually to tour all the facilities where her ingredients are produced, to assure her suppliers values are aligned and the ingredients are grown properly. Her lettuce is not technically organic, she said. It’s grown by High Horizon Gardens in Havre using a hydroponics system which technically is not organic.

“Organics are difficult and is not easy,” she said.

Some businesses start non-organic and work their way to organic, or start organic but eventually drop the idea because of expenses, she said.

“I am not really interested in any of those (non-organic) options,” she said. “It’s just something that is really important to me. I see the value in it, and that makes it worth the extra effort. It’s something that I feel like I’m supposed to be doing right now, and so the fact that it’s a challenge just makes it more rewarding in the end.”

Out of her 43 menu items — she offers six or seven options a week with one special — 85% of her ingredients are both organic and local to Montana, she said. She added that approximately 5% of her ingredients are neither Montanan nor organic.

Manuel said that sourcing her ingredients is a challenge, but she enjoys it.

She said she also has four employees who help her with the business, her siblings Sawyer, 18, Taliya, 15, and Teegue, 11, and part-time employee, Krystelle Carey.

Manuel added that Taliya is also interested in the food industry, and she is happy to have her and be able to teach her first-hand. She also has a couple of other people who occasionally help her out when needed.

Down the road in Streatery

Over the next five years, Manuel said, she hopes to bring her suppliers and distributors as much business as possible. She also wants to bring more businesses in and support the community as much as possible.

She added that she has also purchased equipment for a prep station over her off-season and is planning to take on more catering this year.

“There’s a disconnect between customers and where their food comes from. I’m trying to bridge that gap,” she said. “… Let people know where their food is coming from and appreciate these people because they work hard.”

To other businesses, retail or restaurants, she said organics is potentially more work and could be more expensive to their bottom lines.

“But if it’s something that you believe in, then it’s worth every cent, it’s worth every minute,” Manuel said.

To the consumers, she said it’s worth the investment — people have to think past the short term and think about eating healthier, even though it’s more work or more expensive at times.

“But the truth is that it is an investment in yourself, and that person is worth it,” she said. “… I think it’s really important to invest in it, same with investing in yourself, invest in your community and that means investing in the people around you.”