BELLE FOURCHE—A strong belief that God provides, paired with the new year, brought a fresh direction for the Homestead Store.
The store opened almost a year ago when friends Bridget Johnson and Michelle Hafer were both ready for a change, and a plan for the store came together so easily that they only had one explanation. Johnson, co-owner, said at the time, “Both of us just feel like God opened doors and made this to where we couldn’t not do it. He made it so easy, I don’t have any other answers for it—it’s pretty amazing!”
Bridget’s sister, Brook, has been involved with the store since its opening and found some new products she was really excited about when she was down in Arizona this past winter. “So it was kind of a God thing—honestly, around the first of the year, I had all these ideas…my husband and I spend our winters in Arizona training horses, and there’s an actual olive oil shop that’s in Cave Creek, Arizona…and I was obsessed! That’s all I cook with, so I got the research about the company,” explained Brook. “I was like, Bridget we should bring this to Belle Fourche. It’s Veronica Foods and they source out the highest quality olive oil and vinegar out of California—then you can rebrand them and sell them in your store.”
And just like that, things fell into place for the sisters, with everything coming together in a new direction with no other explanation than God’s plan.
“I’m super health conscious, and I started looking at the research about it. It would go perfectly with the vibe of our store, but the location—we need to be bigger,” explained Brook.
Hafer loved the vision that Brook had for the store but didn’t feel like she had the energy for all the excitement to come, so she sold her part of the business to Brook around the first of the year. Now Brook and Bridget are both sisters and co-owners of The Homestead Store. Hafer told the new co-owners that she would be there to support them and help them anyway she could.
Needing a larger location for the growing store, the sisters found the perfect location—the old Hot Shots Ice Cream storefront was available. At the same time they found the location, the lease on the old store was up.
Everything was falling into place like it was meant to be. The Homestead Store was moving to a bigger location. “The other one, I want to say was like 750 or 800 square feet, and this is 1,200 square feet,” said Brook.
They brought in the new olive oil and vinegar line and planned for the store move. “Then about that time, Spearfish Coffee Roasters—Tristan Bridges reached out to us. He’s like, ‘hey, I want to start a coffee cart in your location.’ And we’re like, well, we’re actually moving locations and there’s a drive-through window—we have no idea what we’re going to do with it,” explained Brook. “He’s kind of held our hands and helped us get started. He trained me as a barista, and we’re bringing a bunch of younger women in who have a work ethic and teaching them the ins and outs of inventory and that type of thing—everything just lined up!”
The Homestead Store opened in its new location with a new addition, The Homestead Grind, offering fresh Spearfish Coffee Roasters coffee, Sage & Cedar herbal teas and matcha, organic syrups, fresh local milk, organic milk alternatives, local honey for sweetness. You can also find smoothies, Italian cream soda, steamed milk, hot cocoa, chai, latte, mocha, cold brew, frappe plus a variety of breakfast foods and much more!
It was finally time to move and put all of the new visions into practice. The Homestead Store closed the old location on Saturday, April 11. Brook said, “I think we closed the store down last Saturday at noon, and we have so many people in our corner that helped us. And we just started moving stuff, and we got 95% of it moved over on Saturday, and then we worked here.” The business opened in its new location on Thursday, April 16.
Currently, the business has six employees with plans to add more as time goes on. “I have some friends that have barista experience that are willing to chip in throughout the summer, and our younger sister wants to work part time and my cousin is helping my husband and I with horses—so she’ll work part time—we have a good network, a group of us,” shared Brook.
The Homestead Store has the goal of only using and selling the highest quality possible. “I just want to say that we are really striving to bring locally sourced food and if we can’t get it locally, we bring the highest quality ingredients we can in here. Our goal is for people to be able to walk in here and not guess—they could walk and buy anything in our store and know that it’s clean, it’s good for them, it has wholesome ingredients,” explained Brook. “And that goes for everything—all the flavors we’re putting in our coffee, our smoothies, everything! We want to take the guesswork out of it for you, so you don’t have to spend hours reading labels!”
The sisters plan to set up outdoor seating when the weather gets a little warmer. They are currently open Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.; and closed Sunday.
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