RF Buche was 7-years-old and getting paid $3 a day to “help” at his family’s grocery store when he saw his dad Bob Buche Jr. take money out of his pocket to pay for a young mother’s groceries. “RF, when you’re in this business, it’s your moral obligation to make sure no one goes hungry,” Bob told his son.

RF Buche has never forgotten his father’s words. As a fourth-generation grocer, he works tirelessly to feed his South Dakota neighbors, both through his business and the nonprofit Team Buche Cares.

Buche Foods runs grocery, convenience, auto parts, hardware and lumber stores and fast food restaurants in 12 communities in South Dakota, mostly on or near reservations. “We’ve been operating in Indian country since 1905,” RF Buche said. “This year, we’ll turn 120, if I don’t screw the whole thing up.”

To better serve its customers on tribal lands, Buche Foods has twice used Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) funding through grants awarded in 2019 and 2020, first to re-open a troubled grocery store in Pine Ridge and then to develop service to food lockers in Marty.

HFFI is a USDA Rural Development program administered by Reinvestment Fund. This federal investment received a $155-million infusion of funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in 2021. 

In 2018, the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council kicked out its previous grocery store operator, after years of poor management that included protests and a temporary shutdown in 2012 over the sale of spoiled meat. “We guaranteed the tribe it would be back open in 30 days. We took it down to the studs and built it back up in that timeframe,” said Brenda Sangster, the company’s Chief Financial Officer. HFFI provided $150,000 to expand dairy and produce options, including expensive refrigeration equipment necessary to provide fresh food.

Buche Foods kept the store’s employees through the shutdown and re-opened a transformed grocery store with bright lighting, cheerful signage, and fresh options. In Pine Ridge, this transformation was vital. It’s a rural community where many people lack transportation. The American Community Survey estimates that more than a fifth of households in Pine Ridge lack a vehicle.

In addition to remodeling the store, Buche Foods have been actively working to make sure people have food access even when they lack transportation. “I’ve always known transportation has been an issue with reservation stores, so I was trying to figure out a way to help with that,” said RF Buche. In Marty, Buche Foods used HFFI funding to launch and test an innovative food locker system to deliver food from its Wagner store to the hundreds of people who live there on the Yankton Sioux Reservation.

The lockers include sections for frozen and room-temperature groceries. Customers can order their groceries online and get a code to open the locker and pick up their groceries after delivery, several times a week. Buche Foods is the only independent grocer in South Dakota where customers can also take Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to order online. 

Delays and cuts in SNAP benefits in November 2025 hit rural and tribal grocery stores hard and left them worried about future cuts. “When the SNAP crisis came along, the anxiety that our customers felt, I can’t imagine,” Buche said. “I can tell you from a business owner, it was expensive from a standpoint of, hey, these people are counting on their jobs and their hours. Cuts in SNAP are potentially cuts in jobs and potentially the business.”

The Marty food lockers are admittedly still a work in progress, said RF Buche. The project has run into technical issues with the location of the lockers, and has encountered difficulty finding people to monitor them. There are no retail stores in Marty, so Buche hopes the lockers will fill the need in the future.

In the meantime, Buche is also throwing his considerable energies into fundraising to feed people directly. A recent fundraiser for Team Buche Cares helped feed 100,000 people in 121 communities over the holidays. A previous event raised money to feed nearly 50,000 kids through a summer meal program.

At a recent fundraiser, Oglala Tribal Council member Anna Halverson shared the impact of the summer food program and raised concerns about the continued lack of transportation in the area. Halverson shared a story about picking up an elderly woman who was walking along the road from a food distribution site, young children in tow.

Halverson recalled the woman’s words: “Every time that you bring meals here, me and the little kids, we walk five miles from our home to the site, just so that we could have food,” she said.

RF Buche hopes to someday start a mobile food pantry, while working to provide better service at Buche Foods’ stores and developing new grocery delivery models in rural South Dakota communities. “I’m passionate about feeding people,” he said. “I’ve just got a deep passion, and I’m a workaholic, and I just love what I do.”