“The Havre market was ready for sushi,” store manager Tracy Job said, adding that stores in regular travel destinations like Great Falls, Missoula and Billings have had sushi for a while. “So it’s not new, it’s just new to our area. And now you can have it any day you want.” The sushi is made fresh every day, he said, with specials every Wednesday. The sushi bar, which offers a wide variety of Asian cuisine, such as steamed buns and spring rolls, is actually a franchise with ACE Sushi, a company that started in San Diego, California and, since 1990, has been working to place supermarketbased kiosks across the country. The company already has several in Montana, from Missoula to Miles City. “Well, we’d been seeing these operations in other stores,” Job said, “… and thought there might be some potential there. And then we ran into the ACE Sushi sales people at a trade show in Las Vegas last February, so we started to talk to them about all of the particulars of what would be involved in putting in a sushi bar and how that exactly works.” Job said he also talked to owners and managers in other Montana stores working with ACE Sushi, especially in Sidney and Miles City, which have similar demographics to Havre. “We compare pretty well to the Miles City market. About the same size town, agriculture-based, small college, that kind of thing, and they were having a lot of success with it,” Job said. “That was one of the deciding factors — once we determined that it was going well in rural Montana and we’re in rural Montana — so we thought there was a good chance it might work, a good chance that our customers would appreciate and take to it. “And they certainly have,” he added. It’s a commission-based arrangement with ACE, he said. “They’re invested in it as we are. The better they do the better it works out for us, too,” Job said. “It does draw additional traffic to our store. We’ve seen some customers come in that we haven’t seen before just to
buy the sushi. “That’s always a good thing when you’re in the retail business, when you add additional customers,” he added. With the new addition to the deli getting started at the end of summer, they hit the tail end of tourist season. The deli had travelers stop in, surprised to see fresh sushi in the middle of rural Montana, he said. ACE Sushi has their own distribution system, he said, and the store provides storage for their dry goods and frozen foods – all the ingredients the ACE Sushi staff uses to make the foods here. Job said that the store also provides the deli space and the equipment. ACE tracks sales to see what items to keep on or add to the local menu from the company’s extensive list of products. “There’s a lot of things that they haven’t yet made,” Job said. This included hot ramen bowls, which were set to be added to the regular menu within a few days of this interview. The store had ordered the equipment at the encouragement of ACE Sushi because the company had found that during winter in in northern locations like Montana, customers like to add a hot food to
their dining routine. “We’re looking forward to that,” he said. “By the time this article runs, it’ll be up and running.” This focus on expansion of the store’s deli isn’t just an accident. “We kind of planned on doing a little more with our deli when we moved to this location (at the junction of First Street and Seventh Avenue) because of the location,” Job said. “Now we’re in a neighborhood area, we’ve got a traffic light, we get lots of folks in from different directions, so the deli’s overall sales have improved quite a bit since we moved from our other store.” In its major remodel to the deli area that was completed in August 2016, Gary & Leo’s added a commercial smoker and added to its menu smoked ribs, chicken and other foods, including smoked turkeys at the holidays. The sushi bar was the next step in the evolution. “We were looking to bring something unique, new to the community, and we’ve had a lot of good reviews,” Job said. “So we’re delighted with the way these guys build their product, the way they merchandise it, the way that it tastes. It’s been a win for both them and us.”
January 2021 | LIVING Havre and the Hi-Line MAGAZINE |
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