Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Amanda Viebrock, Palouse Family Foods owner.
The grocery store in Palouse has a new owner.
Taking over from Jeff and Vicki McLeod June 5, Amanda Viebrock divides her time between a store in Waterville and now Palouse.
The store's new name is Palouse Family Foods to match Waterville Family Foods.
Changes made at Palouse since June were small, until last week when the store closed an hour early Sept. 17 for installation of a new front-end system, new checkstands registers and a customer service booth. Also, a new counter was put in by the hot foods case. A bigger hot foods case is yet to come.
Viebrock, the daughter of a dryland wheat farmer and cattle rancher at Waterville, has owned the store there for six years.
Last winter, she heard through grocery distributor URM that the McLeods were interested in selling the Palouse store. The couple previously bought a grocery store in Wallace, Idaho, and were splitting their time between the two locations.
Viebrock and the McLeods started talking and soon an agreement was laid down.
Viebrock got into the grocery business after earning a degree in agricultural economics at WSU and working for Beef Northwest, a cattle feed lot company with locations in Boardman and Nyssa, Ore., and Quincy, Wash.
She bought the Waterville store in 2013 after working there for a year for family friends.
"I think it's great," Viebrock said of the grocery business. "I like the interaction with people and employees, it's ever-changing."
What is the difference between the two stores?
"In Palouse, we carry a lot more naturally organic items than in Waterville," she said.
The employees have remained the same in Palouse as have the hours of operation, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.
Viebrock lives in Waterville and is in Palouse most often Thursday and Friday when the main weekly freight truck arrives.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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