Ever been to a ranch fest? Well, here's your chance

HAYDEN — Uncle Dan’s got a new home, and he wants to celebrate.

The seasonings and salad dressing company has moved its base of operations to Hayden from Spokane.

Chris Stephens, Uncle Dan’s president, will kick off the grand opening with a ranch festival today from noon to 5 p.m. at the company’s new location, 9151 N. Hess Street in Hayden.

Chris’s father, the original “Uncle Dan,” started the company in Yakima, Wash., in April 1966. Dan came up with the first recipe — Original Southern Dressing, now called Classic Ranch — which it still makes today and which ranks as the company’s No. 1 seller. All of the company’s salad dressings are mixes that consumers add, usually to buttermilk.

Since the company started more than a half-century ago, Uncle Dan’s has expanded across the Northwest with distribution into Canada.

“We just got nationwide in Canada about a month ago,” Stephens said. “In the Northwest, we serve Washington, Oregon, Idaho, little bit of northern California, little bit of Nevada, a little bit of Montana, but it just depends on the retailer and whether or not we are distributed there and we are trying to push that boundary.”

Until last year, packaging was outsourced. Uncle Dan’s has used eight spice suppliers who packaged its dressing mixes over the company’s 53 years in business. The new factory in Hayden gives the company direct control of packaging for the first time.

“This has already saved us probably 60% in production costs, which is pretty significant,” Stephens said. “When we first started doing the numbers three years ago, we couldn’t believe the margins. And so, the last six months, we have been running our own product, and we were almost spot-on with [our] projections.”

The dry mixes are better, Stephens said, as they keep the taste crisp and fresh. The two leading ingredients are salt and dehydrated garlic.

“Uncle Dan’s customers tell me they refuse to use other ranch,” Stephens said.

Stephens’ event planner, Hayley Lydig, who helped create the idea of a ranch festival, was raised eating Uncle Dan’s ranch. Her mother is one of those customers who can’t get enough of the product.

“My mom is a die-hard Uncle Dan’s fan and consumer,” Lydig said. “My mom makes it all the time. When I was little, we called it ‘fancy ranch.’ It was the only way she could get us to eat vegetables.”

Lydig said she hopes the ranch festival is a great success and that community members want to help Uncle Dan’s grow the event in future years. According to Lydig, the real question is: “What do we eat without ranch?”

“It’s like one of the best food groups out there,” Stephens said. “Some people actually think it is a food group.”