Hillside Market: local convenience store for animals
By Sandra Serra Bradshaw
Sun contributor
Nestled in the rolling hills of Leelanau County, home to many family farms and homes, you’ll find the unique feed store, Hillside Market. It’s a well-stocked, close to home kind of place for our animal friends and their human parents to peruse. The store holds a plethora of live-stock feed, pet foods, straw and hay, and other pertinent supplies. But even more, Hillside carries unique hand-picked by the owner toys and treats for cats and dogs, and an abundance of supplies for the horse, bird and other animal lovers and farm folks among us.
The store was started some 20 years ago by the farmer next door, Joe Mikowski, who also works at Northern Lumber in Suttons Bay. “It was an idea I had, and thought we truly had a need for it here in Leelanau County,” he reminisced. “We have so many animals in the area. Having a local feed store would be a great convenience for us, shopping local for high quality feed.”
As an added benefit, Mikowski built the store on his own property, just out in front of his horse barn and paddock, right at the intersection of S. Center and Revold Roads. So that was the start of Hillside, a convenience store for animals, right here in our own community. “It would cost a fortune to start a store from scratch today,” Mikowski said. All the more so here in Leelanau County, it – being just behind metro Detroit’s Oakland County – is among the most expensive places to buy real estate in Michigan.
Some 10 years after the store’s inaugural opening, Mikowski leased Hillside to Amy Bush, who ran it for “eight to ten years,” explained Mikowski. Today it is under new management in the person of Kerrie Merz – a petite dynamo who hauls 50-pound sacks of feed practically as if they were feather-light. “I don’t need a gym membership, I get all the work-out I need right here every day,” Merz grinned.
Merz’s son Cameron is an avid part of Hillside Market. Cameron is 15 and a sophomore at Leland Public School. He helps out on weekends, as well as during vacation time. “Having my son working here at the store has been quite beneficial, both to him and me,” Merz extolled. “He likes the added responsibility, and the sense of ownership that working for our own place brings. Working here has given him the confidence to talk to people he doesn’t know,” an added bonus for sure. “Helping people, guiding them through their purchases – I think that gives him a lot of satisfaction in knowing that he is helping people and their pets!”
Merz was born in Suttons Bay and graduated from Suttons Bay High School in 1994. She’s had her own dogs, cats and horses all her life. Merz has had tons of experience professionally as well, having worked at Black Star Farms in Suttons Bay for 18 years. “I did just about every chore imaginable in helping out there,” she said.
“When Hillside closed in 2020 it became a terrible inconvenience for the locals,” stated Merz. “I was ready to branch out and do something on my own.” She took the leap and began a new venture and re-opened Hillside Market. Merz takes running it seriously, she searches her customers minds, exploring what both her customers’ needs – and wants – are. She excels at knowing such, credence given by the expanding and happy Hillside clientele – both animal and human. “I listen to what people (and their pets) want,” she said with true enthusiasm propelled right out of her heart.
Choose a Healthy Diet for Your Pet
Some may choose to make their feed from scratch, but this takes extreme care to make sure the animal is getting the proper nutrients in the right amounts. Those of our animal friends on a commercial pet food should eat a pet food designed to keep them healthy throughout their life, but with so many choices available to the consumer, choosing the perfect product can be challenging. Unfortunately – which ended up being fortunately in the long run – I learned this lesson the hard way with my own pet.
I was preparing for my quarterly trip to Switzerland with my service dog (which thankfully I no long require the help of one to guide me), “Laddie Dog.” Laddie was a beautiful sable and white full-coated rough Collie, and took to flying across the Atlantic Ocean, seated on the floor next to me, in stride. But just before this particular trip he developed what our vet thought might be mange. The vet tested Laddie five times, but each test came out negative. Puzzled, we did not know what to do. I called Swiss Customs to see if they would still allow my now nearly hairless collie in the country with possible mange. No problem! Off we flew.
Not long after arriving in Switzerland, my then fiancé (now husband) Hans Joerg and I took him to his dog’s veterinarian in a nearby village. Right away she diagnosed Laddie’s hair loss as him suffering from a food allergy. She prescribed a raw meat and boiled potatoes diet for him to stay on for three months. Within just two months on this diet his coat came back, as did a lovely, healthy gleam. It was then I began my own “research into dog food odyssey,” and wow, did I ever learn a lot. Having always had pets my entire life, it was just the way we did things to buy regular dog food at the local grocery store. At the time before departure, I was feeding Laddie a store-bought “natural” dry kibble. It certainly bespoke what I wanted my dear pet eating… but later I found out that its additives and preservatives were anything but natural. The “mange” condition was most likely caused by such added ingredients.
Some tips to offer: first select a well-known, high quality pet food, but it goes beyond that and even beyond not just staying away from the lower cost bargain brands. In fact, many popular, well-advertised pet brands on the market are not healthy. Many contain fillers and low quality – and some even questionable – ingredients. Please check out the Dog Food Advisor, which became my Pet Food Bible of sorts in going through the many brands flooding the pet food market. I recommend this website as well as doing your own research into the oft precarious pet food industry.
It was then that I became a regular customer and began pet shopping at Hillside. There are many trustworthy pet food companies out there, I leave it up to you, and of course your family pets, to decide. But you can be assured the products Hillside carries are well-researched before being offered for sale.
Several years ago, many pets were sickened, some actually died, due to some imported brands of pet foods. In our country, current country of origin labeling laws are either weak or non-existent, and offer little protection to consumers. This especially so when it comes to the source of the food’s ingredients. Actually, for pet food products to be labeled “Made in the U.S.A.” (or for that matter, any other country), regulations require only that the product be “all or virtually all” made in that country and leave it up to the manufacturer. That’s where our part as working at educated consumers comes in.
Labeling rules do not mandate the identification of sources of the individual components that were used to make a product. Please do your homework (or feed-work!), even if a company reports they manufacture a dog food completely in a United States or Canadian facility. There’s no way to assure a consumer the ingredients weren’t sourced from a foreign producer. Again, research!
Of course, take into consideration your pet’s age, size and activity level when choosing what to feed, while also conferring with your pet’s veterinarian.
The day I was last there, both to pick up food for our own dog and to interview its new store owner, Hillside was filled with happy customers, as well as the affable pup Theo, the “Guardian of the Birdseed” in the store and one of the Merz’s pets.
Land surveyor and Hillside customer Tim O’Non of Lake Leelanau had all praises for Merz and the establishment. “Kerrie is a good person, and a good business lady. For a smaller store, she has a great inventory,” said O’Non. “Kerri goes out of her way to help you out. Those are the things you can’t get in Traverse City,” he laughingly stated.
“We chat ‘n feed here,” joked Merz – yes, a coffee shop atmosphere among animal lover friends. “We have wonderful patrons. They like to shop local and support our local businesses. We have a great community!”
You can’t beat the prices, nor the educated and personalized friendly service found here. Big Box pet stores be forewarned!
Hillside Market is open 10-6 daily and closed on Sundays. The address is 3040 S. Center Highway near Suttons Bay. Call 231-866-4064.
