Keeping it local: Happy Day seeks nearby sources of food

Keeping bite size steak on the plates of diners at one of the region’s most successful restaurant chains accelerated the company’s work to strengthen the local food supply chain.

Happy Day Restaurants uses ball tip, a type of round steak, for the more than 500 pounds of bite size it serves every week at Zany’s, Tomato Bros., Main Street Grill and Mystic Cafe, said Tobe Finch.

Until 2021, it had been affordable because ball tip is generally considered an underutilized cut, said Finch, Happy Day’s president.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere during the COVID-19 pandemic, a supplier wanted what felt to Happy Day Corp. executives, like a shockingly high price, Finch said.

Rather than accept the offer, Frank Webster, then Happy Day’s corporate chef, suggested his employer make use of his skills as a butcher.

The company chose to buy the meat in large sections and break it down in house for bite-size, Finch said.

“(Webster’s) like, ‘I’m not going to pay that price and we shouldn’t pay that price,’” Finch said. “So he said, ‘We’re going to do our own,’ and once we did, we started cutting everything.”

Finch and other Happy Day executives didn’t recognize it at the time, but that decision launched a movement in the company.

What’s now loosely being called “Happy Day Local” is focused, among other things, on using as many ingredients for Happy Day restaurants as possible from the region.

“This has changed the trajectory of my life,” Finch said. “It’s a spiritual journey.”

The centerpiece is a butcher shop that recently earned a USDA certification in Lewiston.

It processes beef for Happy Day restaurants from cattle raised by Big Canyon Beef, a ranch about 18 miles north of Nezperce.

The generic name of Happy Day Local underplays the enormity of its mission. Finch hopes it encourages farmers to accelerate the use of more environmentally friendly practices and reduces the volume of fossil fuels needed to transport food.

At the same time, Finch is seeking better reliability in the channels he depends on to supply Happy Day restaurants, as well as more nutritious, tastier ingredients.

The effort grew from a period during the COVID-19 pandemic when Finch and key decision makers at Happy Day were facing uncertainty on multiple fronts.

The company often struggled to obtain products that had been foundations of its menus for years as it navigated snowballing prices, labor shortages and constantly changing rules about in-person dining.

“It was an awakening time for me spiritually,” Finch said.

If Happy Day Local meets its potential, it could pioneer and perfect new processes for the region that could be replicated elsewhere, shaping what Americans eat, how crops are raised and how food reaches families.

But for now, its modest operations are contained in a 24,000-square-foot warehouse behind the Lewiston Center Mall.

The butcher shop provides beef to Zany’s, Tomato Bros., Mystic Cafe and Main Street Grill, sit-down restaurants that are a part of Happy Day.

The USDA certification was an important step in an expansion because it allows Happy Day to wholesale its products to stores or restaurants outside the Happy Day company, Finch said.

Besides the butcher shop, the space has ample room to store shelf-stable items such as canned goods and pasta as well as a huge freezer and a large, refrigerated cooler for perishables.

Big areas are devoted to projects in progress with lots of room to expand. One is an aeroponic system to raise vegetables indoors. Another is a bakery where Finch envisions inventing methods of baking with ancient grains.

A kitchen on one side of the building is outfitted in pots the size of washing machines, spacious ovens and other equipment for big-batch cooking.

Less obvious is one of the efforts that excites Finch the most. It’s a system that would connect small-scale, local farmers, ranchers and even gardeners who produce foods like eggs, tomatoes and peppers with consistent markets for their goods.

Together, Finch believes these approaches and others can make food healthier and more sustainable, not just for his restaurants, but for everyone.

How it started

The roots of Happy Day Local reach back to as early as 2017, originating in a long-standing conversation with his brother, William Finch, about their Christian faith, said Tobe Finch.

His brother was listening to the late John Paul Jackson, who had spoken in churches between 2008 and 2012 predicting a “Perfect Storm” that would create political, economic and weather crises in the decade that followed.

“My brother said, ‘There’s going to be food shortages. We have to learn how to grow our own food,’ ” Finch said.

The enormity of what his brother was thinking overwhelmed him, Finch said.

“I’m going, ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ ’’ Finch said. “I don’t know how and I don’t have the bandwidth for that. I don’t have any knowledge of how to do that.”

In June 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Finch said, everything his brother had been sharing became all too real and fast.

Finch’s faith journey took a turn that was a little reminiscent of Noah in the Bible, who endured ridicule constructing a boat for a storm his neighbors mistakenly thought wouldn’t hit.

“I was up every morning just praying, like ‘God, what has happened?’ ’’ Finch said. “I am just seeing things I cannot believe. It was January 2021 and I hear God speak to me and he says, ‘Prepare. It’s coming.’ ’’

Finch met with Webster, who was then Happy Day’s corporate chef.

They identified staples that would stay fresh for long periods they could order in large volumes so they could keep Happy Day’s menus as consistent as possible regardless of what food shortages developed.

“We called our supplier,” Finch said. “We said, ‘We want to place a large order. We’re going to (spend) about $150,000.’ He said, ‘I will be there shortly.’ He was in Walla Walla.”

The logistics of where to put all the food presented another challenge. They needed a 30-foot by 40-foot freezer. The only way to get one new was to have one custom built and those orders were being delivered as far as year out.

The solution involved mothballed freezer components, a large condenser and evaporators on the roof of the company’s catering building, left over from when it was B & C Meats. The maintenance team constructed an insulated freezer box.

Finch’s instincts proved to be right.

“Maybe two or three months later, when all the drivers started showing up, they said, ‘We thought you guys were crazy. You’re not crazy. There are outages on just about every delivery we’re making.’ ’’

Not long afterward, a friend invited Finch to tour a warehouse he was looking to purchase at the center of Lewiston.

The friend recognized the building was likely the only place in a central part of Lewiston with that much storage.

Finch also saw the building’s immense potential, realizing it could solve the challenge of finding a place to pursue a number of early-stage ideas he wanted to develop.

Hours after the tour, Webster, who is now a vice president at Happy Day, contacted Finch. Separately from Finch and Finch’s friend, Webster had identified the same building as property Happy Day should buy.

That building is now the home of Happy Day Local.

Keeping beef local

The effort is just beginning. One of its biggest successes of Happy Day Local so far, Finch said, is the conversion to local beef for many of Happy Day’s menu items.

The butcher shop provides fresh-pattied hamburgers, bite-size steak, fajita meat, Mongolian beef, New York steaks, ribeye steaks, beef brisket, prime rib, filets and cube steaks as well as four types of sausage – andouille, Italian, linguica and breakfast.

For Valentine’s Day, Happy Day Local expanded that even more by selling some of Big Canyon Beef’s steaks to cook at home. Customers could order two ribeye steaks online for $32 and pick them up in a heart-shaped package at Zany’s.

“We’re just cutting out the middlemen and bringing a wholesome product,” said Drew Mosman, manager and an owner of Big Canyon Beef.

Big Canyon Beef starts with excellent genetics, selecting bulls with traits that produce desirable characteristics in meat like good marbling, Mosman said.

The calves are raised on grass with their mothers before being weaned with a low-stress method.

As it gets closer to the time to harvest the cattle, their diets are supplemented with hay, barley and timothy grass raised on his family’s farm or purchased from local producers, Mosman said.

The cattle live in low-density environments that vary with the time of year and include harvested fields where their manure nourishes the soil. If one of the cows gets sick and needs antibiotics, it’s removed from the herd.

With just a handful of exceptions, 90% to 95% of the meat from each carcass earns a choice or prime USDA grade, Mosman said.

Big Canyon Beef sets the price for Happy Day based on its costs plus some profit, he said. Before Happy Day was a customer, Big Canyon Beef could do that kind of pricing by selling halves or quarters of beef to individual families and at farmers markets. The other option is selling cattle at whatever price the market is offering, Mosman said.

Right now those market prices are extremely good, but over time, the deal with Happy Day provides Big Canyon Beef stability, he said.

“I’m selling at a comfortable price where I’m making money,” he said. “(Finch) knows where he’s going to be for the whole year on price.”

The future of Happy Day Local

Finch hopes that Big Canyon Beef becomes one of dozens of local suppliers for Happy Day Local.

The company is preparing to launch a system where Happy Day can share what it and other wholesale buyers need and what they’re willing to pay, Finch said.

The demand at Happy Day alone is vast, he said.

The producers will be able to deliver their products to the warehouse and be paid through Happy Day Local, Finch said.

Doing so would save growers the trouble of identifying dozens of buyers for all of their products and then adjusting weekly based on the needs of their customers, he said.

At the same time, William Finch is learning how to grow foods like peppers, romaine lettuce, parsley and fennel with the company’s aeroponic system.

The plants grow under artificial lights in metal structures about 8 feet tall. Each structure has a basin on the bottom and a hollow column to deliver water and nutrients to the plants growing in cylindrical pockets.

Even with all of the research, some learning curves still seem steep, Finch said, such as figuring out how to raise tomatoes year round in this region’s climate. It’s likely the method for that will be something other than the aeroponic system, he said.

Still Finch is eager to continue the journey. Creating an alternative to the industrialized food system, Finch said, could help people lead healthier lives.

But it’s even more than that, he said.

Some of the people he’s met launching Happy Day Local, Finch said, don’t see the world the same way he does. Yet they’re able to connect around the shared goal of sustainable food.

“That’s where I’m really leaning in,” Finch said. “It’s a real message of hope. We want good, nutritious food. We want to see our land healed.”

Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2261.