By Robbi Longbrake
BELLE FOURCHE—Less than a year ago, building began on a new CBH CO-OP location to consolidate the Belle Fourche operations and administration under one roof. On January 31, 2025 Todd Reif, CEO was handed the keys to the new finished location.
CBH CO-OP has several businesses spread throughout Belle Fourche. The South Station was the first business that introduced the brand to the area, followed by the expansion into the Agricultural business with the 10 year lease of the Finkbiner location. Next came the CBH Travel Plaza in 2013 and 2016 the fertilizer site was opened. Since the early 90s, CBH CO-OP has been a part of the community.
The new building will provide a centralized location for all of the various businesses offered by the CBH CO-OP. Reif explained, “We’re consolidating all of the admin into the building and we will be bringing the feed and agronomy into this facility, the oil—any of those kind of refined fuel coal products, I’ll call them, that’ll be in this building.”
With the customers being the priority of the CO-OP, Reif is most excited about offering a better opportunity for them. “The way we were set up, things will happen at one store and then it loses the connection to the feed store. We’ve got customers that buy fuel and products and yet they’re doing it with different people in different places,” he said. “It takes a lot of effort to keep that continuity going, and it’ll be made a lot easier in one spot. I’m looking forward to that, and it’s a hard thing to value, as far as financially, but for the customers’ sake, they can be very confident that they’ll get that answer here.”
Move in is under way. Tables are being set up, boardrooms furnished, televisions hung on the wall, all of the small things that go into setting up a new business location. “Boy it is a busy beehive, we had the IT people in getting all the networking done, the phone people are coming a week from today to get that installed, the pallet racking people were here, and the cameras and security systems are installed,” said Reif. “We had the manufacturer in and trained a bunch of our people about the fire suppression system. Then we will have a fire department night and we’re going to have a walk through so if something ever happens, they’re familiar with the building and will know exactly where to come and what to do.”
The new building doubles the amount of storage space available. “The other building over there was 20,000 square feet of storage, this is 16,000 square feet but at the other one, we were only able to stack a couple pallets high. Here we get 16,000 square feet, but now we can stack four high. So we are basically doubling the holding capacity,” explained Reif.
The new facility has a warming room and cold storage. The warming room is 40 feet by 80 feet. Reif said, “Some agriculture chemicals shouldn’t freeze, and then oil too, with our refined products, you know, in the winter it gets cold and thick. It just makes for better product.”
Reif says he is excited to have the building open and everyone together. “I can’t wait. Everybody’s worked so hard for a lot of years, and over time ended up being a lot of separate spots in town. It’s going to be so good to be working together. There’s some nervousness about it, but we’ll quickly get over that. And you know, everybody will find their find their way and groove.”
When all is said and done, the most important part to any successful business is the consumer. That fact is not lost on CBH CO-OP. “The part I’m going to enjoy the most is with with the patrons and being able to just give them really good service. They deserve it. They’ve supported CBH, we’ll give them better results than what I think they, generally speaking, they’ve gotten good results from CBH, and I am just convinced that we’ll be able to do better than that, so I’m excited for it,” said Reif.
Without the help from the City of Belle Fourche and other key resources the new location and building could have been a struggle. “We are very grateful to everybody in Belle that helped get it together. We had quite a few meetings at the city council meetings, and Holly’s area (Belle Fourche Economic Development) had a lot of resources. There is pretty good building and activity in town, so everybody’s pretty familiar with the ins and outs in Butte County. Everybody was very, very helpful, and helped guide us along and didn’t let us get stopped anywhere and gave us a lot of forewarnings,” explained Reif.
One of the ways that CBH CO-OP is different from a normal entrepreneurial business is that it is owned by the customer. All you have to do is sign up and use the CO-OP businesses and the earnings are distributed back to the patrons.
The goal is to have the building up and running and all moved into by March 15, with current plans to have an open house for the public to come see the new building at the end of March.
Read the full issue of the Belle Fourche Beacon by clicking here.
