The Yellowstone Soup Company began simmering up soups and chilis made with local ingredients in 2020. Located just off Interstate 90 in Big Timber, the company, an offspring of the 20-year-old New England Chowder Company, manufactures handcrafted concoctions for regional and national foodservice distributors, major retail chains, and independent restaurants in North and South America.
Owners Craig and Jennifer Rief started the New England Chowder Company in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to supply Whole Foods Market with their seafood creations. The Riefs’ foray into producing soups branched from their involvement with seafood industry on the East Coast. Currently they also own Craig’s All Natural, a fisher, processor, and wholesaler of sustainably sourced seafood.
Yellowstone Soup Company’s products are packaged in plastic sleeves that can be placed in boiling water for reheating or cut open, releasing its contents, to be heated in a pot. For the retail sector, the soups and chilis are available in 24-ounce bags packaged in a container emblazoned with the YS brand and fronted with a hand sketched graphic of the major ingredient. For commercial outlets, a 64-ounce sleeve is available.
The Riefs originally purchased the current 6400 square foot building they are in now with the sole purpose of putting in a lobster processing facility. Craig shares, “But when COVID rolled around, we started looking at what improvements we needed to make in our soup making manufacturing.”
Jennifer adds, “It was a good time for us to pivot and focus on the needs in this area.” The couple had a good number of clients on both coasts, but they wanted to develop new connections in the middle of the country. “We had a need for the meat-based soups and the lentil-based soups. We realized around here our name New England Chowder was a hard name to sell so with Yellowstone Soup Company, we figured it was geographically relevant to this area.”
“We have a terrific bounty of items to work with,” Craig shares of the locally available offerings from Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, and North Dakota that they take advantage of in their production. Their seafood proteins are sourced directly from Alaska and New England.
Quality Food Distributing has provided the company with the needed resources. “They bring us all of those raw ingredients to work with and they also pick up the finished product, but we’re using Montrail Bison, Mulvey Gulch Ranch Beef. We’ve using Timeless lentils, Bausch Potatoes and M and M Heath Beans.”
Also, through Quality Food Distributing, important relationships and collaborations have been established. The Riefs have received requests for customized products along with obtaining fresh ideas for new flavors for their line of soups and chilis.
The creation of the soup combinations originates from Craig. Jennifer helps with the tasting and works on moderating and monitoring Craig’s enthusiasm for wanting to continually add to their product line.
Yellowstone Soup Company products include Meat and Poultry Soups and Chilis, Vegetarian and Vegan Soups and Chilis, and Seafood Soups such as Lobster Butternut Squash Bisque and Spicy Shrimp and Black Bean Soup. Currently the Montana Beef Chili and Montana Bison Chili are the most popular items with the Golden Curry Lentil Quinoa Soup the best seller. “So the Golden Curry Lentil was actually a recipe that came from Craig, and when he first said that we were going to make this soup, I thought ‘oh no, I am not a giant fan of curry and vegan soup,” Jennifer says. Upon first taste she found it delicious, and now delights in its popularity.
The Riefs have customized their facility to be an efficient and productive facility. Their New England Chowder building was three times larger and required more workers. Now, Craig says he only needs a “handful” of crew members. “So part of the design was to be as efficient as possible from an energy perspective and from an equipment perspective, and also from a moving perspective.”
Near the entrances where the raw products arrive, there is immediate storage - in the cooler, on the dry goods shelf or in the freezer. Careful attention is placed on what products are in house so only fresh items go into the final soup product. Completed items are meticulously separated from raw ingredients.
Not far from where the raw ingredients are kept is the heart of the facility. The space, located through an entrance with a plastic strip cover, is the kitchen where the soups and chilis are prepared. In this room are two kettles – one 100 gallon and the other 200 gallons. Both are steam jacketed kettles, “which is probably one of the most important forms of heat.” Soups are cooked to 194 to 200 degrees F. Adjacent to the kettles is the pump filler machine with a roll of plastic film. Stainless steel tables provide space for preparing ingredients while large wash sinks help facilitate clean up.
After a seal is formed on the bottom of the bags, soup is injected into the bag to be finished with a final seal over the top. “So this is an automated process where once we start we go at a rate of 45 gallons per minute.” The completed bag of soup travels down a conveyer into the batch chiller. “Our food safety requirement is that we have to take that food temperature from 194 degrees down to 38 degrees within 2 hours.” The batch cooler is a large cold-water bath that continually circulates cold water to cool the product. Once the soups and chilis are brought down to temperature, they are placed on racks that go into the cooler or freezer.
“We average about 4 hours per batch so by four hours from start to finish for a 200-gallon batch,” Craig says with additional time for boxing.
The retail 24-ounce bags are placed in cups with the company brand and a graphic of the key item. Their Hearty Chicken Noodle Soup has a sketch of a chicken while the Montana Beef Chili, a cow and the Roasted Tomato Basil, a vine of tomatoes. The labels were created by son Hunter who graduated from Colorado University with a degree in marketing. The complete product is boxed and then sealed on an automated tape machine.
At the moment, Craig shares, “We’re operating at about 20% right now.” Yellowstone Soup Company definitely has room to grow, simmering more flavors here under the Big Sky.
