Tanka Bar -- South Dakota Food, National Market

Hand me an energy bar... hey! This isn't granola!

Darn right that's not granola: that's bison! And according to the Rapid City Journal, Native American Natural Foods of the Pine Ridge Reservation is making money off their Tanka Bar. NANF spent two years developing this modern version of Lakota wasna and pemmican, a mix of bison meat, cranberry, and a "secret, patent-pending herbal based preservative." (Doesn't Bob Newland have a patent like that?) They debuted the product last October, selling online and in a few West River locations. Then in March company owners Karlene Hunter and Mark Tilsen took a few boxes to a food expo in California. They gave away 10,000 samples. Now NANF has 1,140 buyers on their distribution list, some as far away as Hawaii. The company is quadrupling production and signing deals with big chains like Walgreens and Sunshine Foods. (Watch out, though, Karlene and Mark, for Wal-Mart: they squeeze their suppliers and take all the profits.)

Tilsen notes that the original plan was to create healthy food for the native population -- a good idea, since the Lakota, like other low-income groups, have some serious nutrition problems. But the surge in demand is coming from wealthier health-conscious buyers elsewhere. The Tanka Bar is good, natural food, but as is all too often the case with healthy food, it costs more than the typical reservation grocery shopper can probably afford.

I sometimes test food prices this way: I figure out how much of a product I'd have to eat if it was all I had available to get my nutrition. The Tanka Bar is a good candidate for that test: preserved meat makes great chow for a long bike ride or hiking trip. To get just the average daily supply of 2,000 calories, I'd have to chow through just about 30 bars, or more than half of a $99 Tanka Bars Family Value Pack.

Now that's not a fair test of a food's value: Tanka Bars are a snack, not a staple. But at a bit over $2 a bar, that's a spendy snack, the kind that's going to find its niche in the market among the well-to-do granola crowd, not typical South Dakota grocery shoppers.

In an ideal world, we could create a more self-sufficient model where we produce and consume more of our own goods and services from what we have right here on the reservations and in South Dakota in general. But the pragmatist in me recognizes we still need to plug in to the larger export economy, and Native American Natural Foods is doing that. They've found a spot in the national market for health foods that will raise the reservation's profile and bring in much needed capital from elsewhere that can turn over many times in the local community.

NANF is still well-advanced on the self-sufficiency curve: instead of trying to recruit some outside corporation to come in and bring jobs, they started their own firm and remain the captains of their own destiny. Now that's a model for do-it-yourself economic development.

pp.s. (political postscript): Native American Natural Foods should break out Tanka Bar samples for Bill Clinton's visit to the Pine Ridge tomorrow. He's all about health food, and the Clinton campaign can use all the energy it can get.

-------------------------------
Update 2008.06.15: No word on how much of a boost Native American Natural Foods got from their Madville Times coverage, but the Wednesday, June 11 appearance of the Tanka Bar on Live with Regis and Kelly "swamped" their marketing department. Thanks, Regis!