Yoder's celebrates grand opening
Photo by Tanna Yeoumans Henry and Verna Yoder partnered with the members of the Chamber of Commerce for their Feb. 3 grand opening ribbon cutting ceremony.
Photo by Tanna Yeoumans During the celebration, the Yoder’s served homemade brownies and ice cream to go with the servings.
Photo by Tanna Yeoumans During their grand opening, Yoder’s provided a cheese sampling table so that local attendants could try their unique cheeses.
BONNERS FERRY — The Yoder’s market opened its new location the morning of Saturday, Feb. 3, with a ribbon cutting ceremony accompanied with fun activities for community members to enjoy. There were guessing games, cheese sampling, deli sales, homemade brownies accompanied with ice cream, served by Bill and Tammy Henshaw, and many friendly faces during the opening celebration.
“The support and the help we got from the community during the move was out of this world,” exclaimed Yoder. “Our heritage is the community working together to help each other, which is how the vision was birthed for Yoder’s Market.”
Thad And Rebecca Husby provided live music for five hours, and a few times others joined in and played an instrument or sang with them.
The new deli area is adorned with tack for harnessing a horse and buggy to keep the feel of the traditional Amish lifestyle that the Yoder’s left behind after they moved to Boundary County in 2003. They have a horse collar that they call the romantic collar, and it is the collar that Henry Yoder’s horse wore to pull the buggy when dating his then girlfriend Verna, who has since become his wife.
Yoder now serves as president in the Boundary County Ministerial Association where he leads a group of pastors with the vision to serve the needs of our community, the idea of which he brings to his business.
With the new location, came some other changes as well. They now serve breakfast, such as biscuits and gravy, as well as burritos, cinnamon rolls, and cream sticks, which are cream filled pastries, all made from scratch with Verna Yoder’s own recipe. They also have a selection of locally produced coffee, which is also brewed and served at the store by Seven Seeds coffee Roasters.
“Our famous cream sticks is an idea we brought with us from growing up Amish,” said Yoder. “People in the west don’t know what a cream stick is, but there, they have been a big hit. Our pastries are all baked and not deep fat fried.”
For lunch, Yoder’s offers homemade soup from scratch, as well as deli sandwiches, which are offered cold or panini style.
Community members gathered around and cameras flashed as the ribbon cutting ceremony commenced.
“David Sims and Dennis Weed have been a great support and encouragement through the whole moving process,” said Yoder. “Dennis participated in the ribbon cutting, David had to leave just before the cutting because of another appointment, but just having him show up to see how we are doing meant a lot to us. People had so much fun, it was like a family reunion.”
Owning a business is not always an easy task, but the Yoders have blessed and have been blessed by the community, which makes long days and business stresses worthwhile for them.
“We are certainly enjoying the new location, despite us as owners working from 4:30 a.m. to 8 or 10 p.m. for the first two weeks,” said Yoder. “We hired eight new employees, so we had to do a lot of training, plus try to keep up with the increase of sales and keeping inventory coming. We have a really good team of employees. Without good employees this would not be possible.”
The Yoder’s opened the new store by holding a prayer meeting in the store the night before the Grand Opening. Around 12 people showed up from different churches to pray with them for the business.
“We need God’s guidance to run this business,” said Yoder. “We want the business to be a blessing to the community and glorifying to God. We continue to pray for our customers and our employees which we have been doing since we opened seven years ago.”
“In the future, we are hoping to run a community produce market in the summer where locals can buy and sell locally grown produce,” said Yoder. “Dennis Weed is helping with gathering information on running the operation, Dennis and I plan to visit other co-ops to get ideas. If anyone is interested in selling produce this summer you should contact us soon and get on the list as we want to have a meeting with the growers this February sometime.”
With the opening of the new location on Highway 95 North of Bonners Ferry, Yoder said, “It feels like we closed an old chapter at the end of 2017 and opened a new one at the beginning of 2018.”
For more information, visit their Facebook page, or stop by the store. They are open 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, and closed on Sunday.