Case Study: A Fresh Idea

In 1946, Marshall and Harriet Yoke opened the very first Yoke’s grocery store. From the beginning, fresh ideas drove innovation and expansion and Yoke’s began offering a “Snack Bar” in 1955 with prepared meals – a novel feature that made Yoke’s the region’s first true supermarket.

In 1975, sensing a shift in customer spending habits and needs, Chuck Yoke created the first “Warehouse Market” in the area, allowing customers to mark their own items and save money. By adding full-service delis, pharmacies and floral departments, Chuck Yoke also pioneered the “modern” grocery store in the Inland Northwest.

Yoke’s believed that empowering associates improved their business and community, and in 1990 Chuck Yoke sold the stores to his associates, leading the way for an employee-owned enterprise in the region.

The “Warehouse Market” model transitioned into the “Fresh Market” approach as we focus on products and departments like our scratch bakeries, locally-sourced produce and premium meat.

Through our collaboration with the URM Store Development team, we were introduced to Yokes in 2022. Having recently purchased a couple of stores in Montana, Yokes needed help to remodel these stores to the Yokes concept. Because these stores would have a large prepared-foods, delicatessen and service bakery offering, they needed key display case suppliers that would execute the vision. Having tried various case suppliers in the past, the URM store planning team felt it was time to get Cayuga involved on the Yokes projects based on their positive experience with us on other projects.

The Cayuga team worked closely with URM Store Development to unpack the projects through a series of online meetings and calls. For both locations, Cayuga was selected to provide modular refrigerated islands with soup ends, hot service counters, bakery service and self-service cases plus deli self-service “grab and go” cases for sandwiches, salads etc. You’ll see the result in the photos below.

As with in every project like these, a key partner is the refrigeration contractor. At Cayuga we like to get to know the contractors and connect with them early in the process to ensure things go smoothly on site. We also value their feedback because it informs how we design, test, build, package and ship cases. After all, as a case supplier, they can be your friend or enemy!

The contractor on these Yokes projects was Market Equipment which is based out of Spokane, Washington. A key benefit for URM is that Jason Kendall used to be part of the Market Equipment team before moving over to the URM store planning team. We have worked closely with Jason on several projects (including these Yokes projects) and found him to be a wealth of refrigeration knowledge and expertise. Additionally, Jack Chambers is our key contact at Market Equipment. He’s another great sources of refrigeration knowledge and expertise and a great partner.

At a recent meeting with URM and Market Equipment, we wanted to get some feedback on how the Yoke’s projects went. Jason was very positive on the quality, service and pricing. He even mentioned our shipping costs (from Ontario Canada) were quite a bit less than from USA based suppliers!

Here’s some feedback from Jack: From the cases that we just installed over at Yokes in Missoula at the Reserve ST the cases look amazing, a cleaner more quality driven than other vendors I work with and from the techs in field easy to work with. We continue to build the relationship with Yokes, URM and Market Equipment and look forward to supporting them in their business. A true partnership!