Lassonde showcases art and future mural

By Robert Williams

Editor

A pair of area business owners who have been featured by the Forum were the special guests of Project 412’s Deep Dive DL on Friday, January 17, at La Barista Restaurant in Detroit Lakes.

Vergas’ Ditterich Mercantile Owner DuWayne Ditterich discussed the journey he and his family took from meat sales at the family farm to running the popular grocery store downtown.

Ditterich official and grand openings were featured in the Forum in 2022, along with a one-year follow-up feature in 2023.

Artist Anna Lassonde, owner of Jollybird Studios in Detroit Lakes, shared the inspiration behind her art, gave a preview of a future downtown mural she has created and discussed the last 2.5 years since opening her studio, a story featured in the Forum in July of 2022.

The event was the first of 2025’s Deep Dive DL series introduced by Executive Director Amy Stearns and hosted by 412’s Ecosystem Booster Sarah Hofmann.

Project 412 was created with the dream of making Detroit Lakes and the surrounding 412 Lakes Area an even better community by making waves and thinking outside the box with amazing ideas.

“We want to be standing on the shoulders of people who made some really good decisions in the Detroit Lakes area years ago and in the past few years even,” said Stearns. “Going forward we want to learn from that and see what we can do to elevate and just make DL the absolute best place possible to live. One way we want do that is by supporting our businesses we have in town and particularly our entrepreneurs within our area.”

Detroit Lakes, much like Frazee and Vergas, has had artists improve their towns with art from Thomas Dambo’s Trolls, one of the biggest 412 projects, to downtown murals like at Billy’s Corner bar in Vergas and the Blue building and CornerStone in Frazee. Lassonde’s studio is located at 901 Washington Avenue in downtown DL, the Counselor Realty building, and later this year a mural she created will be installed on the exterior of that building. Lassonde unveiled a  painted version on canvas on display Friday that showcases local fish and the Detroit Lakes zip code.

“I wanted to do something that celebrated our community so we decided to do the zip code mural,” Lassonde said.

The final version will be applied as a vinyl wrap.

“The concept was we are a fishing community; we love the lakes so we did a lake theme and I tried to use a lot of fish that people like to go fishing for or fish we find in our lakes here,” Lassonde said.

Anna, like DuWayne, had to take a risk to get their business off the ground. Lassonde worked in healthcare while tempering down her childhood dream of becoming an artist. 

“It’s easy to stay where you’re comfortable,” she said.

It was a health issue of her own that made it difficult to return to healthcare full-time that got her started on making art a business. 

“I was laid up and healing and doing my art in bed and I tried to go back to work and was having too much pain in my feet, so I kind of…OK God, what do I do?” she said. “He was…I think you know what you need to do. I didn’t have a lot to lose because I really couldn’t go back and be on my feet because working at a nursing home is very physically demanding and you are on your feet a lot.”

While over time, Lassonde recovered enough to return to her former nursing position, the break and creation of her studio changed her life.

“I’m so happy doing what I’m doing and I have no regrets; it’s definitely something to keep working hard for,” she said.

Lassonde teaches art classes at the DL Community Center, commission work, pet portraits, murals, and private lessons.

The Ditterichs were searching for quality beef back in 2013 to have for their family and after having some difficulty sourcing the meat they started raising four to five head of cattle saving one for the family.

“We did that for a few years and in 2017 my cousin said I need to open a store on our farm,” Ditterich said. “I didn’t know if I wanted to do that; if it was the right time and right place because we are right in the middle of nowhere.”

The Ditterich farm is located six miles southwest of Vergas.

The family opened the business on the farm, ordered a large freezer, and promptly sold out of meat in nine days.

“We obviously found something,” he said.

Part of the traffic was caused on account of Vergas then being two years removed from having Hoffman’s Grocery store in town.

“That was from word-of-mouth and a little bit of facebook,” said Ditterich.

Business quickly picked up and the family was finishing upwards 125-150 head of cattle per year selling 100 percent direct market. Pre-COVID, their products were in a dozen different restaurants at the same time and made for more than a few difficulties in controlling inventory.

A food truck and catering side of the business was added that surprised Vergas customers.

“It wasn’t brand new but it was something,” Ditterich said.

The pandemic was another obstacle that became a building block for the Ditterichs.

“Which was great for me because the grocery stores were out of meat; the restaurants had to be closed,” he said. “We had a farm; we could sell meat and have people come up to our food truck window. It was an ideal situation.”

Then the business took off. Ditterich once received 106 calls for hamburger in one day while trying to get some farming done on his tractor.

“One person called and I just said, ‘No, we don’t have any,’ and he responded with, ‘How did you know I was going to ask that?” Ditterich said.

Post-pandemic, Ditterich joined the Grocery Store committee in Vergas.

“The town wasn’t hurting, but we definitely weren’t improving and going forward like we wanted to,” he said.

Getting a grocery store in town to replace Hoffman’s was necessary for that to happen.

The group made proposals to area grocery and convenience store owners, but according to Ditterich, without them living in Vergas it was difficult to convince them to invest in such a small town.

“One night, we were sitting around having supper and I asked the kids,” said Ditterich.

The question to his three boys was, “How many of you want to farm?” The answer, “None of them wanted to farm.”

The boys did have a common interest in keeping the family’s land and all three were interested in assisting when DuWayne brought up the idea of creating a grocery store.

“When they gave me that answer I went back to the committee and if we can find a way to get a building in town I will run the grocery store,” he said.

Ditterich described working with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Mason Brothers on setting up the store and providing needed information on products and store design.

“The main thing is always find someone who is good at what their job is and help you set up what your goal is,” he said.

The conversation turned to adding homemade lunches and conversations with other food providers in Vergas on how the Mercantile’s lunch helped the competition who were having trouble keeping up by providing customers another source.

Hofmann prompted Ditterich to discuss his marketing strategies, along with promoting locally-sourced products.

“We try to make as many local products as we can,” he said.

Honey at the Mercantile comes from bees that are cared for at the family’s farm, along with locally-sourced maple syrup of course and wild rice that was harvested three miles outside of Vergas.

“It’s as local as local can get,” he said. “We’re not against corporate America, but if I can bring in a local or mom and pop type business—we have a pizza that you can’t get many places around and we’re probably the smallest store they’re in, but we’re number one in sales for their pizzas. When you think of it like that, in today’s world, you can’t compete with the Aldi’s and Walmarts of the world. They have it figured out on how to get low cost. If I can’t be a low cost producer I have to have a unique item to draw people. That’s what I focus on.”

In discussion marketing, Ditterich recalled the family’s food truck days and how utilizing Facebook was an excellent way to get the message out and how that has changed. While Facebook is still used, it’s the way the Ditterich’s use it that gets the job done.

He described the most successful post of the Mercantile was a request to see if people wanted rotisserie chicken in the store.

“Obviously, that was an impactful post,” he said. “People don’t want generic, boring posts. They want something that gets them excited and something to think about.”

Ditterich also talked about a time he had a real estate company create 100 signs for Ditterich Family Farms when they sold meat at home. 

“We put all 100 of those out about the 10th of June and if you were in 10 miles of Vergas you saw a Ditterich Family Farm sign and I honestly think that mad rush from those 100 signs is what complemented that first sale,” he said. “Impactful marketing is way better than generic, in my opinion.”

Deep Dive DL’s are held every third Friday of the month. Follow the Project 412 Facebook page for ongoing details about this series and other events, along with www.project412mn.org for more information.