FORGED IN FIRE
Lahti took the helm of a Traverse City food company just as the pandemic was starting By Craig Manning As the new managing director for Traverse City’s Tamarack Holdings, Michael Lahti is helping to lead a company that is one of the biggest players in northern Michigan’s food and agriculture industries. And it’s a job that, had things gone a little differently, he might not ever have taken. “I can say that if I knew COVID was going to happen at the time that I was offered the position, I may not have taken the job,” Lahti told the Northern Express, before quickly adding a qualifier: “But that’s only because I didn’t realize the perfect opportunity to take the position during a difficult time like COVID. Because there’s fear of the unknown, right? Leaving a comfortable position and venturing into something new is always a little scary, and that’s even before you add a pandemic to it.” Tamarack Holdings is a collective of businesses geared toward getting Michigangrown food from the farm to restaurants, retail stores, and institutions throughout the state and beyond. Lahti’s eclectic background seems to have prepared him well to lead the three-entity company. A year ago, the Grand Valley State University grad was working in the construction industry as the general manager for Old Mission Windows. Before that, he’d spent nearly seven years at Black Star Farms, moving up the ranks from wine cellar employee to the winery’s CFO and director of operations. Even by then, his career had already jumped from commercial lending (his degree from Grand Valley is in finance) to manufacturing. Lahti’s first few months in the Tamarack Holdings leadership role have certainly followed a “forged in fire” narrative. His first interview for the job was a phone screening conducted while he was in a hospital bed
with a ruptured spleen. His first in-person interviews took place in February, the last month that anyone could fairly describe as “normal.” The final interview – and the job offer – came in March, just before COVID-19 impacted the United States. Lahti started the job on April 7. On paper, Lahti acknowledges his timing looks a bit nightmarish. He took the helm of a food-driven business just as Michigan descended into a lengthy stay-at-home order, as schools shut down, and as the restaurant industry cratered. For Tamarack Holdings as an organization, the pandemic could have easily spelled the start of troubled times. As the parent company for three entities – Cherry Capital Foods, Food for Thought, and Earthy Delights – Tamarack Holdings plays roles ranging from food distributor to restaurant consultant to advocate for sustainable food. Cherry Capital Foods, for instance, works with farmers, growers, and other producers in Michigan to sell produce, protein, wild mushrooms, and other foods into three main channels: retail, restaurants, and institutions (including K-12 schools). All of those channels have been impacted by COVID-19, though the shifts have actually led Tamarack Holdings to one of its biggest years ever. Wendy Becker, vice president of marketing and sales for Tamarack, said Cherry Capital Foods has sold more produce in 2020 than in any previous year on record. While the company’s restaurant business has “decreased almost by half,” Becker said a huge boost in retail business – and even a slight growth trend in the category of institutions, thanks to funding that allowed many K-12 school districts to distribute free meal packages to students and families – has enabled Cherry Capital Foods to stay stable through COVID-19.
16 • sept 21, 2020 • Northern Express Weekly
Lahti credits the team at Tamarack Holdings for the unexpectedly strong 2020 numbers – and for making his first months on the job much more positive than he thought they might be. “What I was able to realize is that this was actually the best time to jump into an organization like this,” Lahti said. “Everybody on this team stepped up and was able to grab hold as the organization shifted. We had to shift gears and I can’t name one person in this organization that shied away from that. It was, ‘Alright, we’ve got this challenge. These are the channels we have to ship to; these are the people we have to mobilize; these are the risks we have.’ From every corner of this organization, I was able to see the strengths [of this team].” That’s not to say it’s been an easy first five months on the job for Lahti. The new managing director describes himself as “a very interpersonal person…driven by genuine relationships.” Building those relationships – with the rest of the Tamarack Holdings team, with farmers and suppliers, with restaurants and institutional clients – has been uniquely challenging in the age of Google Teams meetings and remote work. Despite the extra barriers, though, Lahti says building strong relationships has remained the core tenet of both his leadership style and the broader Tamarack Holdings approach. Those factors have proved to be the company’s secret weapon in an uncertain time. “We’re a very relationship-driven company,” Lahti said. “If you were to ask what really sets us apart from a lot of our competitors, it’s that we take a vested interest in our agricultural partners – whether it’s a processor, whether it’s a value-added supplier, whether it’s a farmer – as well as our customers. We really want to find out what their needs are and to help them grow. We get to know
them personally. We get to know what their challenges are. We help them mitigate those. Our goal is to create a streamlined connection from supply to consumer.” That focus – on understanding pain points and helping solve them – is part of what has enabled Tamarack Holdings to pivot successfully during the pandemic. For instance, rather than leave growers and producers to shift gears on their own, Tamarack has worked to understand the changing trends in the retail environment and to advise farmers on how they might change their product offerings to serve new market needs. The business has also been working “consultatively” with restaurants to help them redefine menus, seize new opportunities in the takeout space, and more. The good news for Tamarack Holdings – and for Lahti as he grows into his new leadership role – is that the pandemic hasn’t eliminated consumer interest in quality farmto-table food. While a spring of closures and a summer of 50-percent-capacity dining rooms have been difficult on the restaurant industry, Becker says it’s also led many consumers to take more ownership of the food they buy, prepare, and eat at home. “More people are cooking at home and they’re cooking more complicated recipes at home,” Becker said. “So we think [COVID-19] has brought awareness to that fact that it’s more important than ever to know where food comes from. There’s been a dose of reality over some of the national shortages or some of the large processing plants that have been shut down. We think that’s going to affect the consumer mindset. They are really looking for things that are produced, grown or made closer to home, and that falls right into our playbook. There was always this growing farm-to-table movement; the coronavirus has really just
