About Dari Mart

When Grandma Gladys opened her first Dart Mart store a hometown tradition was born. From our hometown headquarters in Junction City, Oregon, our family business includes Lochmead Farms and Dairy, and 43 Dari Mart stores from Albany to Cottage Grove. Then and now, our family sells the freshest dairy products. That’s because we tend the cows, work the dairy, and deliver our products daily. And we get great satisfaction from knowing that the stores employ more than 500 people in our local communities.

Our Family Story

When Grandma Gladys and Grandpa Howard Gibson put down roots on a small, 120-acre farm west of Junction City in 1941, they established a family, a business and a way of life. Over the years, our family faced many important decisions. One of the biggest was to open stores where we could sell our milk directly to families in the southern Willamette Valley. Grandpa Howard thought this approach made a lot of sense, so Grandma began selling milk from our family’s cows at our first Dari Mart store in 1965.

Running a dairy farm is hard work and it takes many hands. When our parents were just 5 and 6 years old, they began helping out on the farm before and after school. As they grew and learned, they expanded our family’s business. Today, Uncle Buzz tends the 1,200 Holstein cows that make up our dairy herd, Uncle Mike grows the crops, Uncle Jock manages the Lochmead Farms Dairy, and Aunt Pat and her husband, Gary, oversee the Dari Mart stores. Now, seven of us grandchildren also work in the business. And we’re proud that our family’s milk reaches customers in our Dari Mart stores within 48 hours of milking.

Our Business Values

Grandma Gladys and Grandpa Howard set the foundation for how we operate our Dari Mart stores and their work still guides us today. In our work we are:

• Entrepreneurial – We constantly look for new ideas and ways to make them happen.
• Hands-on – We stay close to our work. We do it ourselves if we can.
• Prudent – We make decisions carefully.
• Respectful – We value our employees and involve ourselves in our community. We respect our land, our cows, and the natural environment.

These values guided our grandparents’ dream of a family business. We’ll continue to hold them tightly as we move toward the future.