Why support local business ownership? Let me tell you about Thorne’s Refrigeration.

At the Winona County Fair last month, I ran into Jim and Anne Deedrick, old friends I hadn't seen in a couple of years. That chance encounter got me thinking a lot about how I came to understand why locally owned, small businesses are so important to our lives in SE Minnesota.

Jim and Anne — they are a team, no doubt! — owned and operated Thorne's Refrigeration in Winona from 1989 until 2022. I must have met them for the first time in about 1998, when we needed work done on the first simple cooler we had at Featherstone Farm. Our work continued through larger and larger cooler projects over the decades, ending only when Jim and Anne retired and sold Thorne's to a regional outfit based in Eau Claire.

To say that Jim and Rick, Mitch and Judd, and others just worked on farm coolers over the years would be to miss the essence of our relationship, however. Thorne's Refrigeration was a critical partner to so many parts of Featherstone's growth and success. This was about way more than just being "on call 24/7/365," which they were — always sending the same guys to troubleshoot who had installed the system and who knew right where to look for breakdowns. This was about a small-town, small-business partnership that worked for everyone.

Time and time again over the years, I sat in Jim's office in Winona as we worked out creative solutions to problems we were facing in storage and warehousing. When equipment issues caused the loss of tens of thousands of pounds of carrots one winter, Jim was right there to back us up with an insurance claim. We brought Jim and Anne and their crews tomatoes and sweet corn and carrots; they brought us frozen halibut and salmon from fishing trips. We recommended Thorne's and got them business with several of Featherstone's partners, including a large, weeks-long project in the Twin Cities. When Featherstone faced an existential crisis following the flood of 2007, Jim and Anne were right there with help.

I did not realize this at the time, but what was going on for those 25 years was made possible by the fact that Thorne's was locally owned, that Jim and Anne lived here in the community (still do!), and that they recognized their role in the local economy as something much greater than a bunch of simple transactions fixing coolers. They were community partners in the very best sense.

I discovered this the hard way when Jim and Anne finally retired and sold Thorne's in 2022. 

I'll say this right off: I have never met the new owners. I don't doubt that they are good people, no different than Jim and Anne — that they have the same sorts of relationships with their neighbors and customers in and around Eau Claire that Jim and Anne have here. But here is the essential problem: this company and its owners are in Eau Claire, and their service area stretches from northern Wisconsin well into Iowa. 

I won't go into details, but the transition from Thorne's to new ownership was very, very difficult — and very costly — for us at Featherstone Farm. The issues lasted years, not weeks or months. Instead of Rick or Mitch or Jim himself coming out in response to calls and making surgical strikes on problems with our systems, we had new techs showing up who had to start from scratch. These guys had to spend time understanding the design and function of complicated control systems before they could lift a wrench. This frustrated Featherstone's warehouse people a lot, and led to a lot of extra work for us — not to mention product loss.

Eventually things stabilized, and now our Featherstone Farm general manager, Nathan, reports what he calls basic, "industry-standard service and support."   But what this really means is a greatly diminished relationship with a key service provider who was once a huge asset — above and beyond the nuts and bolts — to Featherstone Farm. The "new normal" is fine. But it is a shadow of what it once was, on so many levels.

This is about way more than some nostalgic vibe I have of "business in the good ol' days." This is about real operational and financial value — not just personal relationships — that a business with locally based, community ownership brings with it.

I am not saying that all local owners bring the same set of values that Jim and Anne did — not all do. I am not saying that owners based 90 minutes away are not valuable or accountable — they certainly can be.

I am saying that when local ownership co-exists with other local ownership in multiple businesses in rural areas — small towns and small cities like we have here in SE Minnesota — important, organic, community-enhancing relationships can take hold, and that these relationships simply cannot happen when ownership is out of the community. I am saying that, for small towns and rural areas, local ownership means that 1 + 1 can equal 3.

And this is just the perspective of another business owner! 

What about all of the employees, customers, and neighbors who benefit from engagement with local owners? This is huge. Think of all that Randy Knutsen (Kendell Lumber) or the Schneider family (Motor Parts and Equipment) did for causes large and small in the Winona area — or all that the Hoiness family (IGA stores in Fillmore County) still does for the communities of Rushford, Harmony, and Preston. The donations, the sponsorships, the scholarships, the leadership in community giving — can a person put a price tag on this?  No! — that would miss the point: the contributions of local owners can be priceless to the lives of entire communities in our area.

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So — what does this actually mean for policies I would pursue as a Minnesota state senator?

How would I propose to support existing local owners first, to help ensure that they can transition ownership to other local owners when they're ready to retire? Might Jim and Anne have found local people willing and able to buy Thorne's from them, with a bit of public policy support?

I have discussed things like this a lot with many, many small business owners in SD 26 over the years. To be clear: I am not advocating any constraint whatsoever on an owner's right to sell his or her business to anyone willing to pay a fair price. I certainly don't want government telling me who I can or cannot sell Featherstone Farm to, or for what price!

And yet — what if there were some sort of public policy incentive to sell to a local buyer? Some sort of very targeted tax relief, or a new-owner mentoring program, or some other creative idea that a newly elected state senator could dream up — in consultation with peers in the small business community — to gently incentivize keeping ownership in the community? What if…?

Jim and I started to discuss things like this at the Fair last month. But my report on that will have to wait for another time. There is so much potential…

JH 7/29/26