- I definitely, definitely would draw attention to the fact that when you see folks out there operating a mobile business, there are so many more linear components going on than just the business that you see on the outside.

- I don't think I would ever move to a building.

I really enjoy mobile.

I like the scenic changes on a daily basis - In this region, we're the only mobile meat processing unit.

We come to you, we come to your facility or your ranch, we take the animal right there so that it's not stressed out - But you never know what you're gonna get.

And being in a mobile salon, like anything and everything can happen.

- I've had the mobile practice for 36 years, so I would repeat what I told myself then just be patient and you know, treat people right.

Good things will happen.

And they have -[narrator]In a state as vast as Montana, it pays to take passion to the pavement, from meat processing and ethnic food to pet care and cutting hair.

These stories explore five mobile businesses that hit the road to serve Montana communities.

This is making it mobile.

This University of Montana School of Journalism production was made possible with production support from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends and values of importance to Montanans and by the University of Montana.

- [Ashley] I have always wanted to work with animals.

They have been my passion all of my life.

I have been doing Groom on the Vroom for six and a half years.

My name is Ashley Bates.

I am 33 years old, so a normal day for me starts off with waking up and setting up my van, cleaning things, setting up shampoos towels, making sure everything is ready to go.

And then I take my kid to school, grab a coffee and then I groom.

And my husband actually came up with the name Groom on the Vroom just because we were supposed to be grooming on the vroom, doing mobile.

I went mobile because I had a shop originally and someone bought out the location and it was either finding another commercial unit or a van.

And considering we already had the name Groom on the Vroom, we found a van for a good price and so we went that direction.

So my black and white dog here is Clarabelle and she's two years old and then the red one over here is Addie and she is almost 12.

She's our old lady.

Sweet.

She's kind of been the Groom on the Vroom mascot for a while.

I thought about actually going into veterinary science, but it didn't work out.

There was an ad looking for a groomer and I answered it and The rest is history.

- Some benefits to being mobile is owners don't have to come to me, I go to them.

It really helps if they're elderly or if they have pets that don't like car rides or even so much as a single mom with lots of kids or someone who works, I can just go in, grab their dog, get it done, invoice them and it's like they never had to do anything about.

-(to dog)You got some dirty feet - Customers typically find out about me, usually just by driving past me or their neighbor, I'll be grooming their neighbor's dog.

They'll see me at a store.

A you know, word of mouth is a huge deal in mobile.

I, at this point in time, I only service cats and dogs.

I've had a goat or two, but typically that's all anybody really thinks of.

I feel like mobile has opened up a different type of business structure than a lot of the other groomers.

It offered something that wasn't here for a long time.

- I was like, oh, hey look, there's Archie.

- I typically see anywhere from 10 to 40 clients a week depending on what kind of dogs they have and what they're like.

- I am Rachel Jessup and I am 35 years old.

Three or four years ago I saw a Facebook ad about it.

She's practically family.

She just walked through the door and grabbed them.

If I'm not here and it's super, she's the most convenient ever and it really doesn't take any of my time.

Zero, zero amount.

She does mostly dogs, but my cat, we call 'em Zuesifer can be kind of grumpy sometimes and she knows how to handle him and calm him down and she's great.

At first he's like, oh no, I'm going to have a bath.

But whenever she brings him in, he like has this little strut that he does when he is done and he, he knows he's handsome.

- So in the beginning the business was hard.

It, it was financially hard.

Now the biggest effect to my family is basically long hours.

Even once I get home they're still work to be done.

They're still cleaning the van, phone calls to make, but it's kind of the part of owning a business.

I would really love to see Groom on the Vroom, expand statewide would be really nice.

However, it takes a lot of money, a lot of time and a lot of patience Had to expand.

I just really love this job.

I really, really love all my dogs.

Some of these dogs, I've groomed them for 13 years and I see them every single month.

It really hits us hard, you know, when a dog passes away, some people don't think it because they think it's just a job to us, but in actuality we know so much about these animals and we grow a strong bond with them.

- You know, I■m 75 years old, I don't want to do it no more.

And I moved Sa Wa Dee corporation to in.

-[Penny]So my, my mother started Sa Wa Dee I believe like 95, 96.

And so I just help her.

The rent is getting expensive in Missoula.

We have been that location for 25, 26 years.

All the buildings, the rent is going up, cannot fight anybody to work for less than 15, $16 an hour.

So all of these thing and have to pass that cost along to the customers.

So the meals become $17 for a meal in a college town.Oh come on.

That's why we chose to go to the food truck.

With our food being 12, $13 like this.

We see people about two or three times a week.

We get to know about them, we get to learn about them, we get to make, become friends with them instead of, oh, your food is too expensive so I can only afford you once a month.

I tap into James, my boyfriend 'cause he's specialized in electrical engineering, all those things.

I'm like, okay, I, I only know how to cook, can you help me with the rest?

And he's like, yeah, why not?

-[James]This middle process with the health department as well, we've made this move relatively quickly when it, when it comes to starting up a mobile operation of any sort from conceptualization stage two, fully operational, we're only looking at eight months.

Our particular scenario is really blessed with the fact that from the kitchen end to the mechanical end, we both have a broad career-based experience.

You know, moving into a mobile business, we're not starting out, we're not struggling to establish, you know, our name, our brand.

And so that's really fortunate for us getting set up and once operational, everybody's like, oh here you are, we know you.

Oh this is what you're doing.

Oh, okay.

We started out with a bunch of events bouncing around quite a bit and then we were humbly blessed to run into Kettle House, miss Ginny, and come to this partnership when necessary.

We can roll out, go perform maintenance, things of of that nature.

But we have just given the nature of their facility and their business access to potable water, access to electric access to proper waste facilities.

And so that's provided us a really huge edge.

- When - Did that happen?

- [Sumalee] All the same.

Everything, yeah.

But over there every day in the restaurant we have a seven dish every day and here we cut down to four, but food, still comes out the same, green curry, yellow, curry peanut curry Pad Thai.

but four every day cannot put too much because we are small - [Penny] Space is one thing I, I get used to having all this space in the kitchen It's really small space, you have to basically have to plan ahead of how you're gonna have your line of production going because that will save you time of producing your food out With the the food truck you spend less, the overhead cost is a fraction of, of when you have a brick and mortar, the rent is cheaper, you switch the rent into the truck payment, the insurance is cheaper, you use less employees.

And then for being in one location for 27 years, I wanna see outside, I wanna go outside, I wanna see all of those things.

So we have a lot of people coming say, I wish you guys be in Stevensville.

Like yeah, this we can go to Stevensville for a day if we want to.

-[James] It's the business supports all of our family, both immediate families and her mother, the sisters, we've got the extended family in Thailand.

All of them are dependent upon our success.

-[Penny]I'm content at what we are.

My manifestation is to be the best food truck in Montana.

Yes, I say that once and I say it again.

- [Adam]Food and housing is a major shortcoming of almost every reservation.

Being able to provide the meat processing unit for our people has been really rewarding and it's been fun.

My name is Adam Zimmer, originally from Broadus, Montana, enrolled Northern Cheyenne - Building - Warrior Beats we're more of a custom processing facility.

We are located in Ashland, Montana, just east of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.

- [Sharon] Warrior Meat Company was established during Covid.

We took a look at an opportunity that became available to purchase a mobile beef processing unit.

We had about 8,700 head of cattle that was leaving the reservation on an annual basis.

So we figured if we could keep a third of that product here locally, that we could feed our own people.

- [Adam] Of the larger facilities, they have six month, 12 month waiting list.

You need to get on there, schedule it out a year in advance.

I prefer to stay a little bit smaller so that we can meet the needs of the local producers.

We're usually maybe two weeks out at the most.

-[Zac] The mobile unit allows u to go straight to the rancher.

It reduces the stress on the animal not having to load it up and drag it somewhere it's not familiar with.

It's not the same thing every day.

You get to go out and face different challenges.

Every job is different.

We're in a rural part of the country and you know, people are used to traveling on dirt roads but a lot of time it, it's a hassle to have to bring your livestock somewhere.

So if they have the ability for somebody to come to them, I think it's a pretty big benefit for a lot of people.

A lot of people have found it pretty useful.

- [Dane] My wife and I have been raising some Scottish Highlander cattle for about the last five or six years and today we're gonna butcher the first one.

-[Zac] So when you go to butcher a cow, you would go out and hopefully it would be in a pen that's manageable.

We use a rifle to desensitize it and then right away we would want to cut the throat, get all the blood can possible and then get it moved to the back of our trailer where we would pull it in and continue skinning it out and hanging it and taking the guts out and then you split it and put it in the cooler.

- [Dane] We're - Tickle to death to be able to support a local business, especially a tribal enterprise.

I'm an enrolled tribal member here and you support your own, you do business with people who do business with you.

The reason I used this Warrior Meats today is they'll come right out into the country and and slaughter 'em right here for you.

That's a lot less stress on the animal.

They can come out and process it on site, take it back, hang it in cold storage and then process it and package it in their butcher shop with Warrior Meats right here, a phone call away, you know, and if they can make it happen, they make it happen.

I mean if it's not today it'll be this week sometime.

So it's, it's the convenience of having them close at hand and being able to get an animal processed.

It's just a godsend for 'em to come in here and be able to do this, especially with this mobile unit - [Quentine] And they enjoy getting their beef processing right here in front of them.

They know how it is.

We keep it clean for them.

-[Adam] We go out to your place, we take your animal, we give you a cut sheet and we cut that animal per your requirements.

- [Quentine] So it's been about a year, about a year or so now I've been a butcher learning about all different kind of cuts and what's really good and I pretty much got the hang of it.

- [Adam] We have a lot of people that donate beef and then we process it and we donate it back to the local food pantries in, in Lame Deer and Ashland, I think last year we donated about 12 beef and 20 buffalo, so we've provided about 14,000 pounds of meat to the local food pantries.

Anytime that we can provide food and security for our people, I think it's, it's a positive and something that I hope to continue to work on.

- [Loren] August 8th, 1987, it was my first day I knew that it was gonna be successful.

I just, I just knew it would, I just had a positive attitude and, and people were receptive from day one.

so I borrowed the money, bought my first used mobile clinic and took off on my own.

My name is Loran Keller.

I'm a veterinarian licensed in Montana.

The way I've set it up and the way I've worked at for 36 years has worked for me.

The first thing I think that that kind of sparked my interest was working on a ranch when I went through school and then when I first started practice, my first aid was to get involved in on the livestock end of it.

I had a clinic and a farm community north of here and was primarily large animal.

Did some small animal but I went through a divorce, left there, sold out to my partner, talked to people that were doing it in other parts of the country, was encouraged by the experiences that they've had.

Now I'm just strictly small animal and exclusively dog and cat.

When I first started it, I envisioned probably elderly and shut-ins mostly or a mother at home with you know, three kids and it wasn't practical to try to throw the animals in the car or the kids and that really hasn't been the way, I mean it's across the board, it's just people just like the service at home.

The animals in general are more comfortable if they're at home instead of being hauled into a unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people and distractions and noises and other animals.

They appreciate the fact that most everything you need to do at their location.

We do a lot of spays and neuters, some injuries, cat fights, dog fights, hit by cars, little bit of everything but spays and neuters and the annual well checks and vaccinations are kind of the, the heart of our practice.

We take a, get a body weight, put 'em on a scale, just check general condition of the animal just visually.

Then we palpate the body, check the abdomen, open the mouth, look at the teeth, the gums, check the eyes, the ears with a stethoscope, we scope the lungs and the heart.

“say,ah,” - it's just kind of an overall external evaluation.

You're dependent on your mobile unit to get you around and provide the service and it's a mechanical piece of equipment and mechanical things break and that happens so you improvise.

If you're completely down for the length of time you're down, business shuts down.

When I first started the business I was looking for business.

Anywhere I could could think that that might be receptive and I knew Lincoln, I'd been in the area recreationally and I knew there was no veterinarian here and decided to try it.

I put a notice in the newspaper, the local newspaper and came up one Saturday and had people lined up and down the highway waiting for me.

I park in a motel parking lot and people come to me there so that's the one exception to the house call.

We come up just two days a month and it's been a thriving practice in that area ever since.

It gives me a chance to get out of, you know, into kind of different area and has worked well for me and the residents in that area.

- I started with him in 1997 and today I'm picking up my granddaughter's spade cat.

- It makes it more rewarding to know that they really appreciate you being here.

I've thought about retirement for a long time but still healthy and I still enjoy what I'm doing.

But if and when a time comes I'd like to find somebody that's going to maintain the practice and the people here in Lincoln, I'm constantly asked how much longer am I going to do this and they depend on the service and I'd like to find somebody that will continue that.

It'd be a tough job if you didn't like the animals.

You have to have a soft spot in your heart for your patience.

Yeah, - Thank you sir.

You bet.

Thank you.

- [Koree] Pretty much - at birth, hair and makeup was my jam.

In high school I was the girl that was like in the locker rooms doing all the hair and playing with makeup and then had like 10 minutes to get myself going.

I am Koree Nicole, I'm in Lockwood, Montana.

I grew up originally in Colorado and moved to Laurel, Montana in ‘99.

I graduated high school in ‘03, finished cosmetology school in ‘05.

I feel like anybody wants like their own salon.

That was always the talking in cosmetology school, be your own boss to do your own thing.

The mobile salon became huge.

Like I saw videos on TikTok and it was huge in the south and I was like, oh my gosh.

But Montana was like very late to the whole game and so I was like, dude, I want to do that.

We found this camper and then we went and looked at it and then it was like, oh my gosh, I have to have this.

It would be perfect.

We drove it home and then immediately started playing.

Before you know it we're mobile.

My boyfriend Aaron was seriously the ins and the outs of this.

He says beers; blood, sweat, and beers it took to make this happen.

It is definitely a vintage camper.

It was very sad doing the remodel on it.

It was so cute.

“Yeah, she's been my best friend so every day is completely different.

I could go mobile into someone's home, I can go into the juvie detention center, I could go into group homes.

I think being mobile makes a huge difference.

I think being able to be more intimate with your client is everything.

-[Dixie] I can do my own hair but it hurts to do it because of the arthritis that I have and so, and I don't want to drive, especially in the winter if we get a lot of snow to go once a week to a salon.

So it's just handy for her to come here, which I think is marvelous.

Well the thing is we've become friends and it just makes me happy to have a friend.

- Some days I could do three colors, two haircuts, waxing, couple children.

I sell makeup and skincare online and I am thankful to that which branched into this beauty business where I can kind of incorporate both of it.

- [Jessica] She's been doing my hair for about 12 years.

I keep going back to Cory because she's a lot of fun and she always does a really good job.

The benefits of her business being on wheels is, I live like 35 miles out of town so we get to meet like halfway when she's running around town so I don't have to drive as far and I can bring my kids when I have them to hang out.

I know she has been going to group homes and helping the people there and then helping the elderly who cannot leave their home or the people that physically cannot and makes them look good and feel good without them having to leave their house.

-[Koree] It really makes it a little more convenient for - everybody.

Before I went mobile I was very ombres, balayage, keeping up with the high trends, but now I have definitely got into the special needs, the elderly, people that have had surgeries and can't go out into the salon with transportation issues.

I got a message for me to go and visit a home where his daughter is autistic and going into a salon is very scary and frightening for this little girl and to be able to go in there and give her a little like more comfortable is like everything to me.

It's definitely a different clientele than I ever had or envisioned, but it is been so rewarding and such a blessing.

It's like a way to give back.

Yay.

- Thanks friend.

- [Narrator] This University of Montana School of Journalism production was made possible with production support from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends and values of importance to Montanans and by the University of Montana.