ACC’s Span Elite Acquires Arctic Harvest Deliveries
Photo Credit: esindeniz | adobe stock
Arctic Harvest Deliveries, which aggregates Alaska-grown vegetables and meats to distribute to local chefs, entered its biggest season for selling Alaska produce under new ownership. Span Elite, a brand of Alaska Commercial Co. (ACC), bought the business from founder Kyla Byers in a deal finalized on February 1.
Fresh Integration
Byers transitioned to a new job with Anchorage Community Land Trust (ACLT). Meanwhile, ACC launched a new program last October to augment its delivery of fresh fruits and vegetables to stores in rural Alaska, flying directly from Seattle to Nome, Dillingham, and King Salmon.
Adding Alaska Harvest, with its established brand of weekly grocery sales built around a farm-share model, aligns with that strategy and integrates with Span Elite, a venerable mail-order brand that ACC has evolved into a direct-to-consumer ecommerce service for the last decade.
“The meat of the business… is selling Alaska produce,” says Jim Walker, ACC’s vice president of wholesale. He notes that summer is a key time for Arctic Harvest. Each Friday, a weekend ordering window opens for subscribers to customize produce boxes and for à la carte customers to order what they want. The following week, customers get boxes delivered at home or at a community pickup point.
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Byers says she got the idea for Arctic Harvest, founded in 2015, after Delicious Day shut down around 2013. “When I started off, I had no idea how big it would get,” she says. Delicious Day had focused on wholesale customers like local restaurants, but Byers soon found a market with individual customers. The business really took off after she added the farm share program. By around year eight, the business started grossing $1 million in annual revenue.
Near the ten-year mark, Byers realized the business needed leadership that could “really take it to the next level.”
Since acquiring the business, ACC has “consciously tried to not do anything major,” Walker says. During the first year, he wants to focus on understanding Arctic Harvest’s operations throughout the various seasons. “We need to make sure we can fulfill the needs we have today,” he says, before considering any bigger changes.
On a smaller scale, ACC is trying some different products in Arctic Harvest’s online store, a maneuver Walker says it’s easier for a large company to do, financially. “We have the added benefit of having stores, so if we have extra product, we can ship it out to some of our closer stores,” he says. “People are happy to see we’re sort of experimenting with some of the product mix.”
Over the years, Byers has built relationships with other Alaska-based producers like Barnacle Foods, Alaska Pasta Company, and Fresh International Gardens to offer a range of shelf-stable and pantry items. To round out the offerings in weeks with less Alaska-grown produce, Arctic Harvest imports fruits and vegetables, mostly through Organically Grown Company.
While Arctic Harvest continues to operate out of its Potter Drive warehouse for now, ACC plans to consolidate operations in its Anchorage warehouse near the airport, once work finishes on a refrigeration unit.
In the meantime, Walker says ACC has leveraged its cash flow and cold-storage space to order more meat for Arctic Harvest offerings. Ordering whole pigs—an expensive item—requires a minimum order of five, so Byers had ordered pork cuts à la carte. ACC was able to buy seven whole pigs in its initial order, storing the overflow in one of the freezers at its main warehouse. It wasn’t stored for long; Walker says, “Basically most of the bacon is gone by now.”
Long term, Walker hopes to increase service for rural Alaska customers. Right now, Arctic Harvest mainly serves customers in Anchorage and Eagle River, plus a handful in Nome. “Down the road, one of the things we want to expand on [is] in more remote, rural Alaska, where fresh produce is hard to come by,” he says.
For her part, Byers says her new role as senior finance manager for ACLT is a chance to help others receive some of the coaching and help that was so important to her own journey. While most of her work involves the nonprofit’s finances, she also works with ACLT’s program team, which works directly with entrepreneurs. Through its Set Up Shop program, ACLT helps entrepreneurs move their businesses forward.
“Being an entrepreneur, I knew how important it was to have support,” Byers says. She’s currently working to launch a shared community kitchen. Byers says ACLT’s work with several food entrepreneurs in the Set Up Shop program exposed the lack of rentable commercial kitchen space.
Byers says she’s excited to work on the project. “I know it’s a big and really needed thing,” she says. ACLT hopes to break ground on the shared kitchen later this year.
