Old Missoula

Long Career

Wholesale Grocery Gets Start in 1885

The Western Montana Grocery Co. has the longest history of any wholesale grocery concern in the region.

The original grocery company was started in Missoula in 1885, just two years after the Northern Pacific Railway was built through Montana. It was located in the Missoula Mercantile Co. store at Higgins and Front streets.

General Manager

Harry M. Hays, who became general manager in 1949, joined the grocery department in 1910. The wholesale department moved into what is now the Carpenter Paper Co. warehouse in 1931. A year later the Mercantile retail establishment and 55 others in eight western Montana counties entered into a voluntary group known as the Red and White Stores.

The Western Montana Grocery Co., a subsidiary of the Utah Wholesale Co. of Salt Lake City, was organized and incorporated in Montana in April 1954. The company at that time purchased the Wholesale Grocery Department of the Missoula Mercantile Co.

The Western Montana Grocery Co. built and equipped a modern wholesale grocery distribution center which opened Oct. 1, 1954 at the corner of Burns and Turner streets in northwest Missoula on the Northern Pacific Railway. The company maintains a private railroad siding for loading and unloading cars.

The warehouse covers 45,000 square feet and is mechanically equipped throughout with fork lifts and tows for efficient operation.

The company distributes throughout western Montana within a radius of 140 miles south, 100 miles west, 75 miles north and 100 miles east. It caters to all food merchants in the Missoula area. It also sponsors a voluntary group of independent food merchants under the International Franchise of Independent Grocers Alliance.

It carries all national brands of foods which are in demand in the territory. Under its operation are a drug sundry department, candy and cigarette department and a frozen foods department. Fifteen are employed in Missoula by the Western Montana Grocery Co.