‘We’re not planning on leaving anytime soon.’ Katy’s Import Foods celebrates 90 years in Moline

This year Katy’s is celebrating its 90th year in business and has been family owned and operated the entire time.

“And the amazing thing is, I’ve been here for 85 of (those years),” Art said. “I’m proud of that fact. We’ve been here 90 years, and I’m the son of the original owner.”

Today, Katy’s is recognizable as the red and white striped building at 2700 7th Street in Moline that carries international fair. But it wasn’t always that way, and wasn’t always in that location.

“To begin with, my dad came from Germany in 1929. He left Germany because of the political and economic situation,” Art said. “He had an uncle in Kalona, Iowa, that sponsored him to come to America.”

Henry Bodenbender moved to southeast Iowa and began working on his uncle’s farm, earning room and board. In order to make money, he found a job with an Amish farmer across the road. Once he was financially ready, Henry moved up to the Quad-Cities where he hoped to find a job similar to one he held back in Germany.

“He had a trade, he was a blacksmith,” Art said. “He knew about Deere and Company, so he came down here and got a job.”

Once Henry arrived in the Quad-Cities, he had another big goal to accomplish.

“When he left Germany, he told my mother he was going to send for her, which he did,” Art said of his father. “My mother came a year later in 1930.”

Katherine, Katy, Bodenbender arrived in America at the age of 25 and took a job with the Charles Deere Wiman family as a cook. In 1931 the pair married, but economics in America in the early 30s were not on the newly weds side.

Henry was eventually laid off from his job at Deere and Co. due to the Great Depression, but he quickly found a new job next to his wife. While visiting Katherine, Mrs. Wiman asked who the new man was that kept coming around.

Henry was hired on as a gardener. Eventually he worked his way up to being the butler to Charles Deere Wiman, the great-grandson of John Deere. At the time, Katherine was not aware of the connection between her and Henry’s jobs.

“She didn’t know that she was working for the president of the Deere Company in the house and dad was working for him in the factory,” he said.

Bodenbenders decide to buy a storeBy 1933 things were back on track for the Bodenbenders, when Henry felt the entrepreneurial spirt calling him. On his way home one day, he noticed a grocery store for sale on the corner of 10th Street and 14th Avenue, down the street from the Deere-Wiman house.

“My father said to my mother, ‘We ought to buy that,’” Art said. “My mother said, ‘And whose going to run it?’ And my father said, ‘you.’ And that’s why they named it Katy’s.”

From 1933-38 the pair ran the grocery store themselves with Katherine at the helm, working long hours.

“At that time the store was open from six in the morning until 10 o’clock (at night) because people didn’t have refrigeration and so they bought on a daily basis,” Bodenbender said. “The housewives would buy something early in the morning to make sandwiches for their husband going to work, and vice versa late at night.”

While Charles Wiman was at work, Henry had free time and stopped by the store often.

“Between the two of them, they ran the store, but they had long hours,” Art said.

For five years the couple ran the store with Henry keeping his job with the Deere family until 1938 when the Bodenbenders decided take a leap of faith and become self-employed. They bought a farmhouse and 10 acres of land off 7th Street in Moline, then immediately built a new store in front of the house.

As children, Art and his three siblings stayed active in the store and were the designated Pepsi bottle collectors. Bottles could be returned for a 2 cent deposit. Once the store was closed for the day the children would put down oil and sawdust on the floor then sweep it up to help shine the hardwood floors that lined the building.

The floors are now tile and have just enough walking space for customers to do a lap around before coming back to the front door. Jars of sauerkraut, mustard and tins of fish line shelves on one side, while different varieties of bread, pretzels and crackers line the other.

A door in the back of the store, now hidden by a poster, connected to the family’s kitchen. A bell was rigged to the door and would ring inside the house to alert the family that a customer was inside. Outside the store, Henry found another way to keep customers coming in.

“My father, coming from a small farm community in Germany, was a country person, so he started a chicken business in our backyard,” Art said. “People would come and pick out their chicken, and we would kill it and clean it. That was a really good business for us.”

At any given time the Bodenbenders had as many as 200 chickens in the yard. The brick chicken house is still standing.

Live chickens stuck around until 1960, when Art himself became more involved in the store. By that time dynamics in America were changing and the store had to make adjustments, too.

“In neighborhood grocery stores, everything was behind the counter and the merchant brought it to the counter. Supermarkets came in and made everything self-service, so I helped my dad switch over to that,” he said, gesturing to the shelves lining the store walls.

Art built those himself while he was in high school. Today they hold chocolates, candy, pasta, soup mixes and anything else he can find that customers may want. Large refrigerators line the back wall of Katy’s where imported meats like bangers and rashers are kept, alongside homemade bratwurst.

In the large meat counter along the side of the store are upward of 50 different kinds of meats and 15 kinds of cheeses. These items are imported from across the globe; a change Art made in the early 60s.

“Then when I got involved with the business, I could see what was happening was you had a lot of immigrants coming in after the war and they were looking for their food: good rye bread, good sausage, this that and the other thing,” he said. “That’s when we started to switch over to specialty foods, primarily northern European, and that’s our mainstay even to this day.”

To get the imports, Art would drive to Chicago and buy them wholesale to bring back to Moline. Everything from Polish to Swedish to Hungarian food made its way back, but German food was always one of the biggest sellers.

“Primarily German because (customers) found out that we were German, and we spoke their language,” he said. “And that helped. It really helped.”

Over the years the customer base of new immigrants stayed steady, but with each war brought new people to America. Word spread about what could be found at Katy’s, and the customer base expanded and evolved once again.

“First, it was all Germans and Europeans, and then for the next 10-15 years it was Europeans who had married Americans,” he said. “To this day we still have a lot of Europeans coming in, but now its people who are looking for gourmet and unique foods. That is what has kept us going.”

From 1960 to about 1990, Art was able to find another way to keep the business alive by branching out into the wholesale market. At the time, 90% of Katy’s business was retail and only 10% was wholesale. Art saw an opportunity to flip those margins.

“I said to dad, ‘I’ll take the wholesale and build it if you stand behind me financially and provide me with the merchandise,’ “ Art said.

Over the course of the next 30 years, Art built up Katy’s wholesale business to more than 250 accounts both in and out of town.

“I drove unbelievable miles,” he said.

Art drove six routes and went through just as many trucks. He started out with summer sausage then expanded into pork sausage, imported boiled hams and Buddig sliced meats. His territory reached from Ottawa, Illinois, to Waterloo and from Dubuque down to Fort Madison.

“I had up to 12 different items on my truck. I had such a variety it was very difficult for a customer to say no to something that I carried,” he said. “I had something for everybody.”

The wholesale business was slowly phased out in the early ‘90s, he said, when big chain stores came into the picture.

“Business grew and grew and that helped me provide for my family,” he said. “But what happened after that is Walmart, Sam’s (came in) and all the small stores slowly, slowly quit because they couldn’t make it anymore. But we were determined.”

The wholesale that was once 90% of the business swung the complete other direction and became 10%. Retail once again rose to being 90% responsible for keeping the family afloat.

“But that’s fine, because our retail is good. We have something unique,” he said.

Art still runs the store himself and talks with every customer who walks in. A few days before Thanksgiving a family came in to buy a specialty flatbread they could not find anywhere else in the Quad-Cities.

“See?” Art said with a smile, emphasizing what makes Katy’s unique.

In recent years, Art has been joined at the store by his son Kurt. Like the rest of his three siblings, Kurt has worked at the store throughout his life, but spent several years away from the Quad-Cities.

“When I came back into town in the last couple of years, I decided mom should be able to take it easy, and I would start assisting dad,” he said. “I saw a lot of things that needed to be done, and I have the energy and mobility, so I started fixing things up.”

One of the big changes Kurt has implemented is bringing a modern touch to the store by starting a Facebook page. When new items are brought in, they are posted on the store page for people to see and plan their trip. Katy’s is open Wednesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.

With Christmas coming, Art expects specialty items like liquor filled chocolates, marzipan and lebkuchen, a German gingerbread cookie, to make their way in soon. For those who can’t make the normal hours, Katy’s is open by appointment by calling 309-764-8662.

Someone is always around, Art said. At least, he’s hoping Katy’s will be for another 90 years.

“We’re not planning on leaving anytime soon,” he said.