Wallace, meet your new grocer
Courtesy photo Jeff McLeod and Jon Cantamessa shake hands after they signed the papers that made McLeod and his wife Vicki (far left) the new owners of Wallace Harvest Foods last week. Also pictured is Cantamessa's wife Iris (far right).
Jeff and Vicki McLeod are the new owners of Wallace Harvest Foods.
For 92 years, spanning three generations the Cantamessa family has owned a grocery store in Wallace, but after nearly a century they decided to get out of the industry.
Jeff McLeod isn’t new to the Silver Valley though, he has spent time here on two different occasions and Shoshone County became something of second home to him.
“I was here from 1991 to 1993 and worked as part of a freight crew at Yokes in Kellogg,” McLeod said. “And then I came back in 1996 and was here for six years managing Yokes.”
So McLeod is not only familiar with the Valley, but he is also familiar with how the grocery business within the communities works.
Beside being in the industry since Jeff was 16, the McLeods also own a small grocery store in Palouse, Washington, where they have resided for the past eight years, and their success there made them confident about their decision to expand over here. “We felt like we had it dialed in and have been successful so we upped the game a little bit,” McLeod said. With all of the familiarity the McLeods had with the area, it was a pretty easy choice to purchase the business for Jeff and his family.
“My wife and I were looking for a place to recreate and we decided to buy a little ski house here in Wallace about five years ago,” McLeod said. “We were in and out of the store all the time and when the opportunity to buy it came up we felt like we already knew the store well and we knew what the Silver Valley had to hold so we made the plunge and buy the store.”
McLeod honored the former owners as well.
“The Cantamessa family owned a store in the Town of Wallace for 92 years,” McLeod said. “That is no easy feat. I have worked for corporations and big store chains before and when it comes right down to it, it’s the small guy that has to get in there and do everything. They did it for 92 years. That is both the fun part and the challenging part.”
There is always questions when someone new buys a long standing business like this one, but former owner Jon Cantamessa believes that the McLeods are going to be a perfect fit in the Silver Valley.
“I think he and his family are going to be a wonderful addition to the community,” Cantamessa said.