(upbeat rock music) - Welcome to "A Shot Of AG."

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

Hey, have you ever eaten at The Feed Store?

I know it's confusing, but we're gonna figure it all out.

Today, We have Lindsay Wineinger.

How you doing, Lindsay?

- I'm great, how are you?

- Good.

- Good.

- So I want to get this figured out right off the bat, okay?

- Okay.

- So there's two businesses, one is a feed store... - Right.

- And one is a restaurant, but the restaurant is called The Feed Store, and the feed store is called The Restaurant.

- (sighs) I mean, feeding animals and humans alike, right, no, just kidding.

But no, (laughs) the animals is Country Feed and Supply.

The humans are The Feed Store.

- Which customers are worse?

- Oh, have you ever met a horse customer, just kidding.

- That's funny, because I know what you're talking about.

- No, a hungry customer and a horse customer, very, very similar.

- Do you have any barrel racer jokes, 'cause that- - Oh, I wish I did, but I don't.

I can get 'em though, for sure.

- [Rob] They're a little touchy sometimes, yeah.

(Rob laughing) - Yeah, I love it.

- Okay, you're from Princeville?

Is that where you grew up?

- I actually grew up in Metamora.

- Okay, so not too far.

- Not too bad.

Yeah, both ag communities, so yeah.

- [Rob] Went to high school there?

- I did.

- [Rob] Went to school where?

- I went to SIU Carbondale after that.

I actually went to be in radio, go figure, but never worked out.

(laughs) - There's no money at all, no money at all in radio.

(Lindsay and Rob laugh) - No, not even a little.

- Okay, so you were a Salukis.

What years were you down there?

- I graduated in '08, so I actually went to community college here, and then transferred- - [Rob] Which one?

- ICC.

- [Rob] Okay, yeah.

Harvard on the hill.

- Yes, it was really great.

- I went there, it's confusing.

- Yeah, and then they have the whole new campus- - You would think of a college, you're like, "Hey, how should we build a building?"

But they're like, "Oh, let's not make any straight lines."

- It's great, (chuckles) keeping us on our toes.

- I guess it has nothing to do with this interview.

- It's great.

- But yeah.

What was your degree in?

- Audio production, radio, television.

- So, yeah okay, what did you want to do?

- I wanted to be in Christian radio, in Christian music production, actually.

- [Rob] Like, just- - Anything.

- The music part or where they have the sermons on?

- Mainly the behind the scenes.

And I probably could racket a good personality every now and then, just gimme a good morning, but- - [Rob] Really?

- Yeah, but I kind of, just like every other ministry, you put in a lot of hours, and I got burned out really fast.

- I imagine, and again, radio.

- Radio, right, yeah.

The people you work with are not right.

- And people always thought I was 12 after they heard me talk, so it worked out really well.

- Okay, say A, B, C, D, E, F G. - A, B, C, D, E, F, G. - It is a bit of a younger sounding- - It is, yeah.

- Okay, you gotta close the eyes, that's the... (Lindsay and Rob laugh) - Yeah, someone says you have a face for radio, right?

- I hear that all the time.

- Yeah, people say that.

- It hurts, honestly, everybody thinks it's funny.

- I mean, they don't think it does, (laughs) yeah.

- Where were we?

Okay, Southern, did you go to Quatro's?

- I did, I ate a lot of Quatro's Pizza.

- Still, to this day, I think it's probably the best pizza out there.

- It is very good and very centrally located in Carbondale, which has nothing to do with that kind of pizza, but then when you go back down and eat it, it takes you back to all the memories that you're trying to forget.

- Is it as good though?

Have you been back?

- I haven't had it in a while, but I don't know if it's good.

I just eat it because- - It's probably not.

- It's probably, I mean, the lifetime that you eat it is usually pretty tainted anyway, so.

- Yeah, we had a guy in here, well, last week, TV stuff, right, and I asked him if they ever went to the bar, Fred's, out in the woods.

Did you ever hear that?

- No.

- [Rob] Okay, it must have closed down.

- It must've.

- [Rob] It was out in the sticks.

- We went to a duck tavern.

It might have been that.

- Like, owned by ducks?

- No, no, I mean, maybe.

I guess I don't really know.

- All right, so you graduated.

(laughs) - This is going so well.

How'd you get back to Princeville?

- So actually, my husband and I grew up in church together.

- [Rob] Grew up in the church together?

- In the church, yeah.

No, my bedroom is in the back.

No, but we both grew up at our local church was a Baptist church and- - [Rob] Ah, the carpeted gym.

- The carpeted gym, yeah.

It is the notorious, there's so many stains that I provided for that gym and the carpet.

But, anyway- (Rob laughing) - This sounds like we got a story there, but go on.

(Lindsay laughs) - Yeah, we both went to separate high schools.

Obviously, I was at Metamora, and he was in Princeville, but we grew up in the youth group together, and best friends became history.

- [Rob] You can't deny love, can you?

- You really can't, yeah.

- [Rob] How many years.

- We've been married 12 years, yeah.

- How many kids?

- Three, three girls.

- And you're homeschooling?

- Homeschooling, yeah, two out of the three, the third is in preschool.

- They're currently back destroying the control room.

- Yeah, beware, if anything turns off randomly.

(laughing) that's them.

(Rob laughs) - Okay, let's get into this, so how did you, what came first, The Feed Store or The Restaurant?

- So, The Feed Store came first.

Country Feed started actually 2016 was when it came about.

My husband, Nathan, was picking up chicken feed for me.

He had gotten me chickens for an anniversary present.

Chickens are the gateway drug to all farming, right?

- [Rob] It's unbelievably true, yeah.

- Yeah, so he ended up getting me a couple chickens.

He stopped in to get feed.

The previous owner was like, "Hey, I'm ready to retire.

"You have a big family, do you wanna buy a feed store?"

And that is how it came to be.

- He must have been a heck of a salesman.

- I mean, he sold us a whole store!

But my husband actually really wanted to get back into cattle.

His family raised freezer beef just to stock the freezer for years.

And Nathan was like, "Well..." We also graduated during a big recession, so he graduated to be- - [Rob] Like, '08 -ish?

- Yeah.

So he graduated to be a civil engineer, and I graduated obviously to go into radio, and he mowed lawns, and I waited tables, so we just naturally wanted to get back to what made us happy, and that was farming.

And then when we found out we could buy a feed store and get all of our feed at wholesale, it kind of worked out.

(Lindsay laughs) - Sounds like my ration.

So this store, how long had it been open?

- It had been open for about five years before we bought it, so it had a little bit of a client base already, locally, but it had never made it to the internet.

That was one thing that we did, and he was all pen and paper.

And so, we started into the technology for the store, and that is really how we took off.

- Okay, so you're selling, is it mainly for the farmettes, the chickens and rabbits and stuff, or do you get into the more commercial agriculture?

- We do a little bit of, now we feed anything, any kind of animal.

(Rob laughs) And you laugh, but we actually feed the local zoo.

So I literally have monkey biscuits.

I have herbivore diet.

I have crocodile diet.

I have all the things right now.

It's really cool.

- What is in a monkey biscuit?

- I have no idea, but they are banana and cinnamon flavored.

- Oh, so it's not made of monkeys.

- No, no, it's for the monkeys, for the monkeys!

- You never know unless you ask of these things.

Did you ever see that movie "Secondhand Lions?"

- Yes.

- They had lion food.

- They did, yeah, it's a thing.

- Could I order that through you?

- Yes, you could, but I also could provide you with raw meat as well, so that's fun.

(Lindsay and Rob chuckle) We feed all the things.

- It had to be a heck of a learning curve.

- It really was, seeing as I was never in agriculture before this.

Nathan was, he had an idea of how things worked, but all I knew was chickens and dogs, (laughs) 'cause that's all I had.

- You say you did a website, because I'm thinking of the feed stores like I grew up around, and they were very local and had a very small circle.

Were you able to reach outside that?

- We were, a little bit.

So our main brand is we do Purina Mills, Land o' Lake Purina Mills, so I'm not gonna go too much into a history lesson, but back in the 80s, they split, and Nestle took half and Land O' Lake took half, so chocolate and milk, right?

So we took the Land O Lake.

We're a part of the Land O' Lake Purina Mills, which feeds all livestock.

And because of that, we are a higher quality feed, so that is a different group of customers.

And you cannot get a lot of those particular Purina feeds at your local box store, and those feeds are what feed a lot of the animals, like in the NFR and in the show world, a lot of them are specialty feeds.

- [Rob] People that are serious about their animals.

- Very serious, spend a lot of money on animals, yeah.

- Yeah, all of us in agriculture know about that split back in the 80s.

Actually, the real story was that Nestle's was... they split off because the other side was talking about their rabbit food and how it was for butchering rabbits, and the Nestle's Quik bunny said, "I'm not having it."

- (laughs) Yeah, that was the biggest reason, I'm sure.

- You didn't know that, did you?

- No, I really didn't.

(Rob sighs and laughs) I'm learning something every day, yes.

- I've gotta imagine it's gotta be hard, because you are selling the higher quality stuff, because you get a big box store here in Peoria, and they're like, "All right, "let's just take a corner of our store "and put dog and cat and whatever food."

That's gotta be hard to compete with, with people that don't quite understand the quality.

- Correct, yes.

But I think there's a statistic out there though, that if you have livestock, it's like over 90% chance that you're going to have a dog or a cat.

So what we're basically doing is feeding the livestock animals and then, oh hey, by the way, while you're here, let me help you do all this as well.

And making sure that if you have a working dog, they need a higher protein in order to do the work.

But we also live in a small town where people feed their birds, so that's a whole other corner of the market.

So we have to help those people out, but also we have the knowledge and the products in order to make all the working things work.

- Yeah, you're feeding animals, but pleasing people.

- There you go.

- You can use that if you want.

- Thank you, I appreciate- - How does that morph into a restaurant?

- (chuckles) It funny how it did, actually.

So we were feeding our own cows, and those are getting butchered, and then we were like, "Hey, we have this space, "let's add a whole bunch of freezers and sell freezer beef."

And so we started with one chest freezer and three standup freezers just full of our beef, another local producer's chicken, and then another local processing place's pork, Wyanet Lockers.

And so, we started carrying beef, pork, and chicken in our freezers, but we couldn't get rid of our beef fast enough.

- [Rob] What do you mean by that?

- People weren't buying it as fast as we were producing it.

- Oh, oh, I gotcha.

- And my mother-in-law has always had the dream of opening up a restaurant for a very long time.

- [Rob] Really?

Okay.

- Mhm, yeah.

She actually, we say the Big W Wineingers, and then we're the Little Wineingers, but the Big W Wineingers actually bought that city block that our store is located on.

- [Rob] Could you stop for a second?

- Yes, I can.

- Did you just say they bought a city block?

- They did, in Princeville, yeah, city block.

- Are you guys related to the goods in Kiwanis?

Oh, let's just buy a city block.

- Let's just buy a block.

Well, it was an old car dealership, so they took up the whole block.

- [Rob] Okay.

- Yeah, so we bought the block, and basically, my husband and I used the front, the showroom, as our feed store.

And then as a family, we all used the warehouse space.

- [Rob] Makes sense.

- And then we rented out the other two spaces, the detailing shop goes to someone else, and then there's another shop that we rented.

So, my mother-in-law wanted to build a standalone restaurant because this was a big dream of hers- - [Rob] And you have a block.

- We have a city block.

- [Rob] Why not, yeah.

- So she wanted to build a standalone, but it just wasn't possible.

And I said, "Well wait a second, "out west when you have to drive two hours to go anywhere, "your feed store and your diner are in the same building."

"You go and pick up your feed and then you go get breakfast, "so why not try it now?"

So it was logical.

- This makes sense, I guess.

- And she already owned the building, so we just moved all of our feed, squished it into a spot, and then we put a restaurant in the other half, and that helped us use our meat for a few of our dishes.

And then also, we are gaining new customers by people coming in to eat dinner and also people that are buying feed and then eating dinner afterwards.

- You could do, like if you eat a 96 ounce steak, you get a free bag of rabbit food.

- Oh, we should do that.

- Yeah.

- Gosh, you're just giving me all sorts of business ideas here.

- So did you make these, did the restaurant make these?

- So these are special to us.

A big part of the restaurant is that it's home cooking.

It might not be the best food you've ever eaten, but when you eat it, you're thinking, I remember eating that as a kid.

And so these desserts that we have are actually my mom's.

So my mom comes in and makes all of our fruit pies.

- [Rob] Really?

- Yes.

And then this is my Grandma Noni's famous chick carrot cake recipe.

And so we make it, but it's in the family, and it's Mom's cooking, it's my mom's pie.

- [Rob] So this is the what, the apple pie?

- That's the apple pie, yeah.

It's got the crumble topping.

- We only got two forks.

- I'm gonna let you eat it.

- I specifically requested 3.1 forks.

- There you go, I don't get it.

(Rob taps his fork) Farm joke.

- 3.14, pi.

- Oh geez, now I got it.

You know, slow.

- Maybe stick to cooking.

- Yeah, okay, sure.

- All right, I'm gonna try this.

- I wish I would've microwaved it.

- It was a funny joke!

- It really was!

- 3.14!

- That's how many people laughed.

(Lindsay chuckles) - Oh, that's really good.

- It is.

- Do you wanna try some?

This is where they break the union rules.

I have a free fork.

- Free fork.

- Yeah, here, give her a try.

- [Crew Member] This one?

- Yeah, get into the middle though.

- [Crew Member] Oh, this looks so good.

- It does look good, doesn't I?

- [Crew Member] Divine.

- Divine, she says.

- I was really excited about the research behind this pie, so I got to eat a lot of pie, so it was great.

Then my mom makes that, plus peach pie and blueberry pie and cherry pie, but she comes in every week and makes all of our pies.

- I like the apple.

I haven't tried the other ones.

- Sure.

- Maybe we won't completely close that, 'cause I'm not sure I'm done with that yet.

(Lindsay laughs) Now this is grandma's?

- Grandma, we call it the 10 Karat Cake, but it's karat with a K. - Is that a play on the jewelry?

- Yeah, yep.

- Okay.

Oh, it's got a superfluous layer of frosting in the middle.

- In the middle, it's a two-layer.

- Because usually I would go for the back.

I think I'm still gonna go for... What would you do?

- Cream cheese frosting is a big deal.

- Well okay, we won't, we'll go for the middle.

- There you go.

- But yeah, you can see the extra frosting there.

I'm gonna get a little bit there too.

- (whispering) The silence is killing me.

(Lindsay laughs) It's like the Gordon Ramsey, you know?

Am I allowed to say that?

Two bites, I say that's good.

Does it take you back to your grandma's kitchen table?

That's the point.

(Lindsay laughs) How long is this segment?

(laughs) Are you going to eat the whole thing?

(Lindsay laughs) - It's pretty good.

- It's really great to hear.

(Lindsay laughs) - Is that what you do?

Do you, when people are trying to eat this, do you... - Like stare at them?

- Talk to them the whole time?

- Yeah, try to kill the silence.

- You wanna try this one?

She's like, "Oh, twist my arm."

Yeah, it's really good.

- Thanks!

- Don't you wish you would've kept your fork now?

- I get to eat it all the time, so I'm glad you guys get to try it.

- [Crew Member] This is a big piece.

- Yeah, that's an aggressive bite.

They don't feed 'em here at PBS, that's the whole problem.

Okay, I'm gonna stop eating.

I could keep eating.

- Well, you get to for sure.

- And this is what, steak tartare?

- Yes, you could call it that.

- So what do we have here?

- That's our ground beef.

We sell all cuts, but I just brought, it was the easiest one to fit in my pocket, actually.

(Lindsay and Rob laugh) But yeah, we sell all the different cuts of beef, and this is what we make all of our hamburgers at the restaurant out of, and I make a killer spaghetti.

- So this isn't just like Walmart stuff you're making here.

- We had it graded few years back, and it is a 90/10.

- Oh, so it's good stuff.

Yeah, it's good stuff.

- Not that there's anything wrong with Walmart- - I love me a good- - The emails come in.

- Oh, I'm sure, yeah.

- "I eat at Walmart all the time."

I don't care.

This is really good though.

- Yeah, we're competitive pricing of Walmart, so, there you go.

- Is there a bunch of hoops you have to jump through to sell meat?

- Not as many as people think, but we still have to have a license to sell it, yes.

- Okay, you say, "We are driven by fulfilling the needs "of the community," tell me about that.

- So, we started a business, obviously, you have to go through all of the different thought processes of starting a business, but in actuality, we knew that starting this business wasn't going to be a multi-million dollar success story.

- [Rob] You never know.

- I mean, you're right.

- [Rob] With carrot cake like that?

- (laughs) But we saw a need in the community, and so we wanted to fill it, especially in the restaurant.

We have no place in town to eat dinner.

We had a lunch- - [Rob] In Princeville?

- Mhm, we have Casey's, Casey's Pizza puts up a good fight.

- That catches up with you, you know what I'm saying?

- (laughs) Yes, it does, yeah.

So that was a nice easy way where we could fulfill a need and not step on any other small business people's toes.

Because that was another big part, is we want everybody to have a piece of the pie (laughs), - (laughs) Or 3.14 pieces.

- Yes!

- Three point, okay, yeah.

And so, that was a way that we could help a need and help other businesses in town.

- Okay, Princeville is a pretty small community.

- It is, yeah.

- Is that a benefit or maybe not so much?

- I will say that we have a lot of returning customers, but our ideas and our other business dreams put us in a spot where we have room to grow because of the community.

And we're looking at trying to make it a destination spot to come out to Princeville and maybe shop if we can come up with some shops and... - (sighs) Okay, when I was younger, I would say, "No, that's not possible."

But in Bradford, there used to be a German restaurant, and their customers came from Peoria.

And what I think we saw was that it was like a destination.

It was a whole night thing.

We're not just gonna go to Culvers or whatever, we're gonna drive to Bradford, enjoy the meal, and then have the whole night of it, so do you think Princeville can be the same thing?

- I think it's possible.

I don't think we're there yet, but I think it's possible.

- [Rob] It's possible.

- Wishful thinking.

- You're very serious about your faith.

You say you go where God leads you.

What do you mean by that?

- So there's a book, and this is gonna show beautifully.

I've never read the book, but I heard this saying (laughs) that it's like you never build the trellis before the vine, so you wanna go where the need is.

You don't wanna build up this big empire and then no one need it.

So we had a hay shortage a couple years ago, and so we started a hay and straw business, and we've been able to help support the ag community through that, and then, I'm trying to think of other examples.

The chicken industry right now is going a little berserk with the increase in egg prices, and we found a way that we can support our chicken farmers, and we have the ability to have our Chick Day every year.

- [Rob] Chick Day.

- Chick Day, the first Saturday of April.

- We used to have those at Southern too.

(Rob laughs) - Yeah, very funny.

I like it, but so we're gonna have like 1,000 chicks in, 1500 baby chicks that we can sell, and I don't know if it's gonna be, I think it's gonna be a really good year for chickens.

- Okay, that one I'm not such a fan of, because I know what's gonna happen.

You're gonna give a bunch of husbands that have to build cages and stuff like that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And that's on you.

- And I will happily direct you to the local hardware store to do that, (laughs) because I want him to have- - Is it in your city block?

(laughs) - It is not in my city block, thank the Lord.

- Tell people where they can find y'all on social media or the websites, all that stuff.

- So, the Big W Wineinger empire is all under the Wineinger Farms, and that's the farm side, so that's all the beef.

And then also, when you start feeding the animals, that's Country Feed and Supply, so Facebook is Country Feed and Supply, Princeville, and then the restaurant is The Feed Store, Princeville.

You can find it on Facebook and Instagram.

- No TikTok?

- Oh, no, no.

- Is it because it's- - It's because I am out of that age group, and I don't know how it works.

- I'm older than you are.

I've got a TikTok.

- Go you!

Yeah, I am not that smart.

Metamora, remember?

Stick to the cake.

Great.

- Yeah.

- We did try a YouTube channel.

I think we'll work on that, yeah.

- It's odd here at PBS.

- It is, I'm thoroughly, thoroughly entertained.

- They're not happy with me, because they don't get fed very often, and so they rely on what's left.

So every bite that I take of this delicious carrot cake is a bite they don't get.

(Lindsay laughs) - Let me know, I'll bring you more.

- She's not gonna bring you more.

(Lindsay laughs) I don't mean to ignore the apple pie.

- From what I understand, this is superior.

- This is good.

- Yeah.

- All right, Lindsay, thank you very much for being on.

- I appreciate it.

- Really cool story of what you guys have done.

- Thank you.

- To everybody else, (sniffs and clears throat) we'll catch you next week.

(Lindsay laughs) (dramatic music)