ALPENA, S.D. — Gov. Larry Rhoden has seen plenty of examples of successful businesses during his Open for Opportunity Tour. Since he launched the tour in March, he has visited communities and businesses around the state, hearing from owners, managers and employees about what makes South Dakota a place to work and live.
He got another sample of that Wednesday afternoon when he visited the Jack Link’s facility in Alpena, where hundreds of workers make their living producing meat snacks found in grocery and convenience stores around the country.
“I’ve said it, I don’t know how many times? Dozens of times on this tour, I am amazed every day at what’s going on in South Dakota,” Rhoden told members of the media following a tour of the plant on the north edge of Alpena. “I really had a first-hand look, and today was no exception with Jack Link’s.”
The Jack Link’s plant has been a staple of the Alpena and Jerauld County communities for decades, dating back to 1994 and undergoing expansion as needed up until current day. The plant has around 850 employees on site and operates 24 days, seven days a week.
Its product is familiar to anyone who has been hungry and in need of a quick snack. The plant produces several Jack Link’s brand snacks, including several flavors of beef jerky and snack bites. Bags of those morsels can be found in convenience and grocery stores from coast to coast.
It takes a lot of work to produce and bag those snacks, and Jack Link’s works to make sure it has the workforce to complete those tasks. Rick Tebay, plant manager for the Alpena location, said the company has taken steps over the years to make working at the 160,000-square-foot facility as accommodating and appealing as possible.
That includes welcoming children of the staff on-site when a parent comes on or leaves a shift. In some cases both parents work at the facility, and allowing children to accompany a parent coming onto a shift so they can go home with a parent just coming off a shift is important when daycare options are limited everywhere.
That is the kind of support the company offers its employees to operate the largest beef jerky plant in the world.
“We see that it’s tough for daycare in our area,” Tebay said. “So what we do is we allow the team members to bring their children into the break room. They can feed them in our cafeteria. And then they avoid having to pay daycare.”
Rhoden was at the plant as part of a day that saw him spend time in Huron at Potter’s Shoes and Trussbilt, as well as the world’s largest pheasant, before making his way south to Alpena. It was another chance to take in both larger and smaller communities in the state.
He appreciates the chance to interact with business owners, managers and employees within the state. The visits allow him to connect directly with the public, and he uses the stops on the Open for Opportunity as a personal notebook to take back thoughts and ideas on how to maintain or improve the strong state business climate to Pierre.
South Dakota has traditionally been a state that is touted as business friendly, with no state income tax and less-strict regulations in some sectors that encourage business growth.
“It comes in a lot of different forms, just input or questions or comments about what they need for regulations that are unnecessary. It’s been a perfect storm for me,” Rhoden told the Mitchell Republic after he took an extended tour of the plant. Jack Link’s officials denied members of the press covering the governor’s visit to accompany him and his party on the tour.
Rhoden noted he had been told by an employee on the tour that the Start Today SD Apprenticeship Program, a component of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Registered Apprenticeship Program that launched in 2018, had been helpful in the story of the plant.
The governor cited that as another reason South Dakota is an inviting place for business. Even with a workforce shortage, officials at the state level are still working to help fill the gaps where they’re found. That was a pleasing comment to hear, he said.
“Eventoday,just20minutes ago, as we were on the floor having a conversation with the manager here, and he was telling me about how invaluable our apprenticeship program that we created probably six years ago has been, and it really made me smile,” Rhoden said. “I got to witness the end product of seeds that we planted six years ago. To get that kind of feedback and then working to help in different areas, whether it’s over-regulation or regulations that are unnecessarily cumbersome and being able to address them at the state level, or solicit help at the federal level, has been extremely valuable to me.
Rhoden spent about an hour at the Jack Link’s plant before heading off to his next stop, this one at Trussbilt in Huron. It was a fast-moving visit that he said reaffirmed his confidence in South Dakota to not only manufacture quality products, but to do it in a way that makes employers want to locate there.
He had already seen that in his two months of Open for Opportunity Tour visits, and he expected that would again be the case on his next stop, wherever that may be.
“Then here we are. It’s been a pretty incredible experience, just getting around the state in big towns and small towns, and even in the rural communities,” Rhoden said. “(Alpena being a) town of 260 people with a factory that employs 1,000 people is pretty incredible. I think only in South Dakota.”