12/03/2025
I’m glad I was able to help out Viking Village Foods during their unexpected cooler outage. Watching Pam and her team come together to get the store back up and running in no time was incredible! Everyone jumped in wherever they were needed and stayed positive through it all. It was truly inspiring to see such teamwork and dedication.
Sunday evening, our entire refrigeration system at Viking Village Foods went down without warning. Every cooler, every case, every shelf in our store and backroom had to be emptied immediately to save thousands of pounds of product. Within moments, our employees and their family members and friends showed up and began working side by side.
A call was made to the Reedsburg Fire Department, and in true Reedsburg fashion, volunteer members responded instantly. They rolled up their sleeves and worked alongside our team in a race against time to clear and protect every item in our store.
Skinner Transfer and Riffey Transport and their drivers, of Reedsburg also stepped in without hesitation, providing refrigerated semi-trailers so we could safely store all temperature sensitive product until repairs were made. Their generosity made an overwhelming situation manageable.
By early Monday morning, our refrigeration was repaired and safe to use again. Employees, their families, and friends returned, many running on little or no sleep, to re-stock every department including deli, meat, produce, and dairy. Thanks to everyone’s incredible effort, we experienced only minor product loss and were virtually able to save everything.
By 4:00 PM Monday afternoon, our shelves were fully stocked and ready for the community. Our goal is to make major incidents like this go unnoticed by our customers, and this week our community helped us achieve exactly that.
Without the amazing support of our employees, their families, the Reedsburg Fire Department , Skinner Transfer, Riffey Transport, Amber’s Clean Slate, and the community we proudly serve, the outcome could have been dramatically different. We would have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in product, and the impact on the Christmas season would have been significant.
From Pam and Jeff Coy, and Bill and Phyllis Pierce, to everyone who stepped up in our time of need, thank you. Viking Village Foods is grateful to be part of a community that takes care of one another. Our team works tirelessly behind the scenes every day, and this week proved how strong we are when we come together.