Bob is dependable, strong, and available to work 24/7 at the former school kitchen in what is now Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Bovey. He’s an industrial strength mixer, and he substantially reduces the time it takes Kelly and Georgia to make their KellyG’s wild rice burgers. Recently the team added a yet-unnamed patty maker and cut the time even more. The two human members of this team are aunt and niece and they’ve been making delicious wild rice burgers since 2017. Lots of wild rice burgers—there are six frozen burgers in a plastic sleeve, 6 sleeves in a case, and they make and sell over 75 cases every month. KellyG’s is a woman-owned business succeeding in a tiny community on the Iron Range, using local wild rice to make a vegetarian and gluten-free burger that is growing in popularity.
They are part of a small number of value-added processors on the Range. They’re licensed as a wholesale manufacturing processor and they can sell directly to retailers as well as to distributors like Fraboni’s and Tri-State and Upper Lakes Foods. Making the burgers is only the start. “It takes lots of work to keep this product in stores” says Georgia, who lives in Bovey and developed the recipe for the burgers. The house she shares with her sister became their test kitchen and Kelly’s family in the Twin Cities became the taste testers. I first met Georgia when she was giving out samples at a Saturday taste testing at Natural Harvest Food Coop in Virginia. Mmm good.
The day before I interviewed Kelly and Georgia at the kitchen in Bovey, they had made 1,180 burgers. They were neatly laid out on trays in the commercial freezers that line their supply room at Mt. Olive, ready to be packaged. The wild rice comes from Deer River and is cooked before it’s made into the patty. Pepper Jack cheese, eggs, and gluten-free flour are the next three ingredients on the label. Some zesty spices give the burgers flavor and they can be baked, pan-fried, or deep-fried for a tasty and nutritious burger—each patty packs 11 grams of protein! For the more creative cooks, they can be crumbled to make meatless meatballs, meat loaf, stroganoff with Alfredo sauce over noodles, stuffed green peppers, breakfast “sausage” or even sliced into wedges and dipped into sauces as an appetizer. Pretty versatile vegetarian, gluten free food!
It all started when their family was on vacation in northern Minnesota and ordered wild rice burgers for lunch at a local restaurant. They went home and started experimenting with recipes, and the rest is history…and a new business for a very small Iron Range town. Their first taste-test for the public was at Mt. Olive Church in Bovey. They used to mix all of the ingredients by hand and make the patties by hand. But the addition of Bob and the patty maker have cut their work time by two-thirds! Along the way, they were able to participate in a Department of Agriculture sensory testing event that involved 4-5 producers with their products. There they learned that folks like the burgers a bit spicy, and they adjusted accordingly.
Georgia and Kelly pick up most of the supplies because very few distributors deliver to Bovey unless they’re coming there anyway to pick up cases of burgers. And they keep all the records and make all of the sales calls. They would like to get KellyG’s wild rice burgers out to even more distributors. Recently, they’ve explored distributing through Performance Foodservice, a large restaurant distributor. It’s not a done deal, but they are hopeful. And that’s the plan—keep marketing to more distributors and retail outlets, growing a small local business, one burger at a time.
In the same way, it’s one business at a time that will grow the Iron Range local food system. A food system needs growers, processors, distributers, and retailers. This column has been telling the stories of growers across the Range. And though we don’t yet have enough growers who are producing for local sales, we have even fewer processors like KellyG’s. Dahl’s Dairy is the only dairy left. We have no cheesemakers producing local cheese. No meat processing--livestock farmers in our area have to drive hours to find a USDA meat processor. Most distributors serving the Range are from outside of the area. On the retail side of things, we’re better off. We have retail groceries, c-stores and restaurants, but their ability to buy local depends on local growers and processors. That’s why we’re working to build a local food system, from the growers up.