‘Still Grieving’ After Loss of Dot’s Pretzels, Velva Community Sees New Opportunities – InForum

VELVA, ND – The email pinged Mike Schreiner’s inbox at 7:30 a.m. on a Tuesday last August.

The news wasn’t good: The Hershey Company, which purchased Dot’s Pretzels from founder Dorothy “Dot” Henke in November 2021, closed its factory in Velva, where the wildly successful pretzel company began.

A Hershey spokesperson cited numerous reasons behind the decision: the building’s physical limitations, its reliance on manual versus automated processes, its remote location and a facility whose size is “not conducive to scale.”

The news spread quickly through Velva, a town of just over 1,000 residents about 22 miles southeast of Minot. Surprise and disappointment followed. Especially among city leaders like Schreiner, who knew that 27 people would lose their jobs and the city would lose one of its larger businesses and $7,000 in tax revenue per month.

Dot’s had put Velva on the map. Literal. Founder Henke insisted that each Dot pack include a small silhouette of North Dakota, with Velva’s location marked by a star.

Schreiner recalled picking up packages of pretzels in South Dakota and proudly telling people, “These were made in the town where I live.”

Velva even became a tourist attraction. “We would get people on their own trips to leave their normal travel area to see Dot’s Pretzels,” he said.

Most residents realized that Hershey might not be there forever, but the closure still felt like a betrayal. Schreiner questioned why the company hadn’t approached city officials sooner so they could have worked together to avoid closure.

“From what I understand Hershey, they are very historic and promote family values,” Schreiner said. “So for them to close this facility where it all started, I took it personally.”

He wasn’t the only one.

“I think the city is still grieving,” said Iris Swedlund, a longtime teacher and librarian. “Now the city is realizing, ‘Oh dear, now we’ve lost part of our main street.’ And we don’t have a Dot.”

Maybe.

When Henke heard that Hershey would be closing Dot’s factory, Henke told The Forum that she immediately began brainstorming ways to find a new company to fill that facility.

“When I saw the building empty and it was designed for manufacturing, that’s what I looked for to fill those walls with that excitement again,” she said.

Mason Kramer / The Forum

The Forum has learned that a former Dot employee is opening a replacement business in its old building, a yellow steel building and adjacent warehouse in the heart of the city.

When Soo Line Railroad officials surveyed the fledgling settlement that would become Velva in the late 1800s, they stood atop the tallest hill and looked down on the lush, jewel-green valley below.

The story goes that they called it a “valley-like velvet,” which most locals say inspired the town’s charming, old-fashioned name. (Some think it was actually named after a railroad official’s daughter, but that’s not nearly as poetic.)

Today, the McHenry County town is still as postcard-ready as ever, with rolling hills, abundant trees, and the Mouse River forming a winding path through town.

Here, the owner of the Mouse River Oil gas station still pumps gas for customers and provides food and shelter to former stray cats.

Mason Kramer / The Forum

The owner of Finish Line Burgers & Brew greets newcomers by calling them “hon,” and the burgers – voted “Best Burgers in North Dakota” – live up to the hype.

That homey atmosphere helped draw Schreiner to the area when he was promoted to head a new security forces unit at Minot Air Force Base in 2009. The former Happy Hooligan wanted his children to grow up in a small community like his hometown West. Fargo.

Schreiner liked everything about the city. Across from the high school, a picturesque bridge crossed the river to a tree-lined park and golf course. In a grocery store that reminded Schreiner of the old Larson’s SuperValu in West Fargo, the smell of freshly baked bread hung in the air. The town offered a good school, reasonable travel distance to Minot Air Force Base, and down-to-earth people.

Mason Kramer / The Forum

“That’s what drew me here,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it’s Mayberry, but when you walk down the street and people see you, they say hello.”

Swedlund said she felt the same way after moving to the city from Mandan as a young teacher. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful area,” she said. “It’s kind of a secret.”

She had never heard of the city before she was offered a teaching position there. Fifty-five years later, Swedlund is something of an unofficial velvatologist. Her name even adorns the octagonal school/public library that she designed.

As Swedlund lobbied various school officials for resources for students over the years, she found the predominantly Scandinavian community deeply committed to learning.

“We have an excellent school district. It is very well known,” said Swedlund, who has won numerous Teacher of the Year awards. “It has a very intellectual population. The point is that you want to have interesting lectures, conversations, programs, learn something – and not gossip about who has the new red dress. I think that’s why I stayed here.”

Due to its proximity to Minot, Velva has a number of commuters, but also provides employment locally through larger employers such as the Souris Valley long-term care center, the ADM plant that makes biodiesel from canola, the local farm implement dealer and the Verendrye Electric Cooperative , which provides power to Minot Air Force Base.

Mason Kramer / The Forum

Still, the close relationship with Minot is “a blessing and a curse at the same time,” said Monty Mayer, the community’s superintendent since June 2023. “I am the first superintendent in Velva who has lived in the city for quite some time. ”

Mayer made his commitment to the city clear. He and his wife Kay, a teacher turned special education paraprofessional, walk to and from school every day, support local businesses and are active in their church.

“I think they embraced us for that reason,” Kay Mayer said.

Tammy Swift / The Forum

While Monty Mayer doesn’t believe the school district has lost students due to Dot’s closure, he sees the impact on the city.

“In a city this size, losing a business is going to hurt,” he said.

The story surrounding Dot’s is already legendary. Inspired by a Chex party mix that Henke tasted at a wedding reception over a decade ago, she experimented in her kitchen to come up with the perfect recipe for buttery, garlicky, tangy, spiced pretzels.

She and her husband, Randy, started selling their pretzels at concession stands during football games. They moved into a commercial kitchen while promoting their brand through numerous Pride of Dakota shows and trade shows. They later purchased a dilapidated garage in Velva and renovated it, opening the Dot’s Pretzels factory in November 2012.

“There was no water in it, there was nothing in it,” she recalled in an earlier Forum article. “I was there for a long time scrubbing floors and everything else.”

The couple then rolled out an ambitious product sampling strategy. They studied a map of North Dakota and then targeted convenience stores in communities with more than 1,000 people.

Each store was sent sample boxes to hand out to customers as a free gift. “We thought if they could taste it, there was a good chance people would buy it,” she said.

She was right.

Once the business gained momentum, she said, the company grew 8% every month. Henke often worked seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. If someone called in sick, she and Randy had to work the line or fill in where necessary.

At the height of the Velva factory, Dot’s employed more than 100 people, working 24 hours a day in three shifts to season, package and ship pretzels. The Henkes would also add spice plants in Kansas and Arizona.

Ann Arbor Miller / Forum file photo

After Hershey’s acquired the brand, its workforce decreased. By the end, the majority of employees were commuting from Minot and only a handful lived in Velva, said “Dan,” a former employee who asked to speak anonymously as all employees signed non-disclosure agreements as part of the plant closure.

Part of that streamlining could come from joining Hershey’s large network of factories, where some processes could be handled elsewhere.

But it was also due to the post-COVID worker malaise that was hitting everywhere else. “They had a hard time recruiting,” he said.

Dan said he could see that the limited size of the factory made it difficult to automate operations. “Financially, I understand why they didn’t want to modernize the setup there,” he said.

While the former employee said they were blindsided by the closure, he added that Hershey officials “were good about it. They didn’t just come in and tell everyone to pack your things and go home.”

The company gave the employees two months’ notice and decent severance packages. They also offered to move people to factories out of state, although he doesn’t know anyone who has approached them about it.

Dan said he was able to find a new job quickly, but knows the only predictable thing about the work world is its unpredictability. “I never get to the point where I have to rely 100 percent on a job,” he said. “The larger the company, the less likely it is to be truly safe.”

Even if there is no longer a Dot’s Pretzels in Velva, the leader’s positive example may have inspired others to take risks and follow their dreams, said Maria Effertz, a Velva native and director of the North Dakota Department of Community Services Department of Commerce. .

“Here is someone who started in his own kitchen and cooked in the middle of the night and worked to the limit. It means this could possibly happen to anyone,” Effertz said.” It gave people a bit of a spark: if she could do this, maybe I could do it too.