Assistant Manager
Wallace Harvest Foods
Talen Caraway, of Wallace, ID, says his first retail job at a movie theater company led him to where he is today. “That is where I learned the basics of customer service and working with the public,” he says.
He moved to the East Coast in 2011, but a year later, 2012, he moved back to the Pacific Northwest. “My father-in-law had a small grocery store in Washington state and had an assistant manager position open. I had never done anything with grocery before, but my prior retail experience did carry over somewhat.”
In 2017, his father-in-law bought a full-service supermarket in North Idaho, and Caraway and his family moved to Idaho so he could work at the new supermarket, Wallace Harvest Foods, with his father-in-law.
With a crew of about 14 people, Wallace Harvest Foods is an independent supermarket in a historic mining-turned-tourist town in the Pacific Northwest. Caraway’s typical day includes working the produce rack and placing orders, building produce displays and cross-merchandising.
“In this family-owned store, I’ve always needed to be quick to adapt and adjust day to day, whether cutting meat on the block, working frozen freight, or doing a reset in the aisle,” he says.
“As a younger person who started in grocery in a small store, the larger and corporate side of the industry is fascinating to me. Produce Business offers so many helpful and interesting insights. The industry award coverage, industry trends, and numerous articles that the publication offers gives this ‘small town boy’ a unique perspective into the larger, ever-changing world of grocery, produce and retail as a whole,” says Caraway.
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