Medical Lake's Denney's Harvest Foods changing hands

The business has been integral to the social fabric of Medical Lake for nearly a quarter century, and while Denny’s Harvest Foods isn’t going anywhere, the owner, Kathy McDaniel, a slight woman with short, sandy-blond hair, gray eyes and glasses, is moving on.

She and her late husband, Denny, the business’s namesake, had been working for several months in 2017 preparing to sell and retire when his untimely death radically changed McDaniel’s life.

“We were in the process of working with a buyer when he passed away,” McDaniel said in her second story office that overlooks the aisles below.

Wearing a black Medical Lake Cardinals sweatshirt under a vest, McDaniel clearly maintains strong emotions about the current sale and all that it represents.

She came to be the reluctant storeowner in a roundabout way. It certainly wasn’t a responsibility she wanted, she said.

McDaniel and Denny met in 1979 when she went to work as a cashier at Owen’s IGA on Spokane’s South Hill after she was laid off by the City of Spokane. Denny was the assistant manager at the time. They hit it off.

Later re-hired by the city, McDaniel stayed on at the IGA part-time. Asked if she kept the part-time gig because of Denny, McDaniel admitted, “That was part of it.”

She later followed Denny to Odessa in 1992 after he bought a grocery store there, quitting her 17-year city job to do so.

“You follow your leader,” McDaniel said, saying that Denny was a leading force in her life. “As I was for him, too.”

She went to work in the bakery and deli at the Medical Lake Denny’s in 2011 after they sold the Odessa grocery store, and was still making donuts and sandwiches when Denny passed.

Suddenly, amidst the shock of her husband’s sudden death, a new level of responsibility fell on her shoulders.

“I had to step up a bit,” she said.

They were big shoes to fill. Denny, she said, was an everyday, shirt and tie, hands-on kind of guy.

“Like clockwork,” McDaniel said. “He was old-school dress for success.”

She’s been overseeing the store since. The couple was preparing to move into retirement, and had a buyer in 2017, but the deal fell apart when Denny died.

Now the long wait will soon be over once the sale closes, possibly as soon as the end of this month.

The store is part of, and supplied by URM, a Pacific Northwest retailer-owned co-op food distributor that serves Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana grocery and convenience stores, according to the company’s website.

Although McDaniel wouldn’t share the buyer’s name, she said he owns other grocery stores in the URM network.

“He knows small towns,” McDaniel said, a detail that was an important aspect in the sale for her.

As far as she knows, all 26 employees will stay on board after the sale, not that there won’t be changes later, she said.

How does McDaniel feel about selling the store that has been so much a part of her life after trying to sell the store before Denny’s unexpected passing?

“Relieved,” she said with considerable emotion. “And a little bittersweet, probably.”

McDaniel and Denny leave behind a strong community legacy. She guessed the store had employed on average about ten high school-age kids per year.

And Denny’s has been a regular contributor to various local non-profits, churches and school programs. Denny was instrumental in bringing the Blue Waters Bluegrass Festival, now in it’s 18th year, to Medical Lake.

McDaniel’s stepson, Zane, who plans to continue working at the store, estimated that Denny’s had donated something like $5,000 annually to various community groups.

“At least in the thousands,” he said.

The store has weathered the shifting seas of the retail grocery business. During McDaniel’s tenure the impact of retail giants like Walmart took a sizable chunk of the store’s business. But Denny’s has survived.

“We have a lot of good supporters in Medical Lake who depend on us,” she said.

She also pointed out that most of the store’s employees had worked there for a long time.

“Some longer than I have,” McDaniel said.

For some Denny’s is an institution, like the regulars who come in for morning coffee daily to shoot the breeze. During the school year kids from the high school across State Highway 902 “are out the door in lines,” during the lunch hour, McDaniel said.

“You have to have that community feeling when you walk in the door,” she said of working at the store. “Everybody knows everybody, and a lot of people come here to visit.”

Now in her sixties, McDaniel expressed mixed feelings about selling the business. She admitted that it might be tough when she walks out the door for the last time as the owner.

“People have to move on,” she said, noting that she and Denny were partners. “I’m just tired of doing it alone with out him.”

McDaniel was illusive about her retirement plans.

“I’m going to go through 40 years of stuff stored in the garage,” she said.

The new buyer was unavailable for comment by press time.

Lee Hughes can be reached at [email protected].