A lasting legacy
More than 60 years after coming to Hazen to start up a grocery store in town, Dalles Krause, Sr. is able to look with pride at how his store grew as a business, a gathering place of friends and neighbors and a significant part of the life of the community.
“Well, I think what I try to hang my hat on is that I wanted people to think that it was their grocery store,” he said. “We named it Krause’s SuperValu, but in reality, I wanted it to be my employees’ store, my customers’ store and my community’s store.”
A family trade
For Dalles, the grocery store business was something that came from the family, ingrained in his blood from his own childhood.
“It really all started in 1944, when my dad and my grandfather bought a small grocery store in Carson, North Dakota,” he said. “I was 11 years old at the time, and I started carrying out groceries.”
He continued to work at the family store throughout high school and into his college years.
“I guess it was just a part of me,” he said. “I just fell in love with what I was doing.”
Dalles spent two years at Bismarck Junior College, joined the United States Army for two years (during which he was deployed to Korea) and then returned for two more years of college, this time at the University of North Dakota. In college, he studied accounting.