Scaling From Scratch | with Kurt Loudenback
On the latest episode of Behind the Business, Founders in the 605, Marcus and Alexis Mahlen sit down with Kurt Loudenback, founder and CEO of Grand Prairie Foods. Headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Grand Prairie Foods is a food manufacturing enterprise specializing in Ready-To-Eat food products for hospitality, convenience and retail food industries.
Kurt grew up on a small dairy farm in central Ohio, and started his career in management at Purina Mills after graduating from Ohio State University. After moving around to different cities with his family as he worked his way up the corporate ladder, he moved his family to Sioux Falls in 2022 after visiting the city on a work trip the year prior.
One year later, he was approached with an offer to buy the meat processing plant, Dakota Foods. After a sanitation issue left behind by the previous owner forced them to shut down six weeks after taking over the company, Kurt leaned on his sales and marketing experience to build the business up from scratch with a new name — Grand Prairie Foods.
In this episode, Kurt explains how he built Grand Prairie Foods to be the successful company it is today through learning to pivot and jump hurdles when challenges were thrown his way.
Today, Grand Prairie Foods has over 300 employees and Kurt recently sold most of his shares in the company while remaining as the CEO.
Click below to listen to the episode on Spotify.
Kurt Loundenback recording this episode of 605 Founders Podcast in the Loft Advisors Studio at First Dakota National Bank.
From left to right: Alexis Mahlen, Kurt Loudenback, and Marcus Mahlen.
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