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Beneklman Company has Wal-Mart Contract On Ice
Chris Crossett
Editor’s note: The C-Clear Ice Company was one of the first entrepreneurial profiles to appear on Nebraska Rural Living (click here to read it). We’re pleased to bring you an update on their recent business success..
It took two years of paperwork and reviews, signatures and approvals – repeated once because the paperwork got lost – but C-Clear Ice of Benkelman is now delivering ice to the Wal-Mart SuperCenter in McCook.
C-Clear owner Chris Crossett is excited about the opportunity to enhance the business he started two years ago in a former bowling alley at the top of the hill in Benkelman.
At the McCook Wal-Mart, C-Clear has replaced the former ice distributor, a company based in Canada with distribution out of Omaha. Chris said that the big difference between his company and the Omaha company – and a huge advantage – is the size of C-Clear's bag and its price. "We sell an eight-pound bag of ice for the same price they sell a five-pound bag," Chris said Monday morning, after making his weekly delivery to Wal-Mart.
Chris said his competitor has monopolized the ice market in Nebraska for several years, and has dropped from a seven-pound bag to the five-pound bag, without a drop in price. "They kept the price high, but lowered the amount of ice," Crossett said. And because the company bought up smaller Nebraska-based ice companies, he said, "people had no choice."
Crossett said he'll deliver 100 eight-pound bags and 50 20-pound bags of ice to the McCook Wal-Mart store once a week through the end of the winter. "That'll quadruple in the summer," and he'll make deliveries three times a week, he said.
Wal-Mart considers Crossett a "local distributor," which requires the approval of local and district managers, credit checks, and review and approval by Wal-Mart headquarters officials and buyers before final contracts could be signed.
After a three-month probationary period, C-Clear Ice could request that it be allowed to deliver to other Wal-Mart stores.
Chris knows firsthand what it's like to deal with ice companies – he and his wife, Carolyn, moved to Benkelman to run the bowling alley and diner. "We were using six to seven bags of ice a day at the diner," Chris said. Talks by local economic developers encouraged local initiative, Chris said, and "out of the blue, we checked into ice."
Chris, Carolyn and a professor from the University of Nebraska wrote a business plan, the bank loaned money for startup costs, and the bowling alley became an ice-manufacturing plant.
C-Clear uses double-filtered, reverse-osmosis-treated water to make 10 tons of ice in 24 hours. There's a bin that holds 22 tons of ice before bagging and a storage freezer that can hold 60 tons of bagged ice – "if I stack it right," Chris said.
Chris runs routes with three refrigerated trucks, and is looking for more truck drivers/delivery people.
His routes take him to "Mom-and-Pop stores" and "the big guys."
"I promised from the very beginning," Chris said, "I won't sell ice to the Moms-and-Pops any higher than I do to the big guys, no matter what quantity they buy. Everybody pays the same price."
C-Clear Ice LLC and the Crossetts' Strykers diner is located at 1309 A Street in Benkelman, next door, on the south, to the TimeSaver's convenience store. The Crossetts can be reached at (308) 423-5558.
Who To Contact...
C-Clear Ice Company and Strikers Diner & Gourmet Coffee
1309 A Street
Benkelman, NE 69201
308.423.2052
cclear@bwtelcom.net
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