Team Buche Cares brings food directly to Rosebud families

ROSEBUD—When Rosebud Sioux Tribe interim president Lisa White Pipe declared a state of emergency, RF Buche knew his organization was in a position to do something more immediate than issue a statement of support.

Team Buche Cares loaded up food and went to work.

“We knew that we had to jump in and help,” Buche said. “On her instruction we hit the communities that were affected the most right away. And then we are continuing those hunger distributions as we can until we’ve hit the entire reservation.”

Buche is president of G.F. Buche Company, a fourth-generation South Dakota business operating grocery stores, convenience stores, hardware stores and Al’s Oasis at 26 locations around the state.

Team Buche Cares, the company’s nonprofit charitable arm, has increasingly focused its efforts on one of rural South Dakota’s most persistent problems: getting food to people who may live a long way from the nearest grocery store.

Buche understands that problem because selling groceries is his business.

“We operate on six of the nine reservations and we do business with all nine reservations,” Buche said. “Transportation is very difficult, and it is not uncommon for one of our customers to be 45 minutes from a grocery store.”

That distance becomes considerably more important when a family is short of money, has an unreliable vehicle or no vehicle at all.

Team Buche Cares tries to bring the food to them.

Central to that effort is the Mobile Hunger Hero, purchased by Team Buche Cares in 2025 as a mobile food distribution hub. Instead of requiring families to travel to a central warehouse or distant food pantry, the truck can take food into rural and tribal communities.

In 2026, the Mobile Hunger Hero has already completed 85 food distributions across South Dakota. Since 2024, Team Buche Cares says its hunger relief efforts have provided more than 600,000 meals to children, families, veterans and elders.

Rosebud families receiving assistance are not simply handed a standardized box and sent home.

“We’ve got like eight to 12 pallets of product in kind of a watermelon bin, and the customer can go in and take three of each, or whatever number that we’ve got,” Buche said. “They just kind of sort through and pick what they want and go home able to put food on their family’s table.”

Food being distributed can include two cases of hot dogs along with juice, frozen products, canned goods and other grocery items.

Choice matters. Families have different needs, different-sized households and different tastes, and Buche prefers giving people an opportunity to select food they will actually use.

Getting that food into isolated communities, however, requires considerably more work than what people see when the truck arrives.

“Usually two per distribution,” Buche said when asked how many people it takes at the actual site. “But a lot of prep work goes into getting it to that point, so you’re probably talking about another six to eight people who have probably put in 100 to 200 hours so far in doing this.”

Team Buche Cares has no employees of its own. Much of the work is done by volunteers, often G.F. Buche Company employees.

For Buche, helping reservation communities is not something his family discovered recently.

His great-grandfather opened the family’s first store on the Yankton Sioux Reservation at Lake Andes in 1905. Even the pronunciation of the family name has a reservation connection.

“Our name is spelled B-U-C-H-E, and everybody would think it would be ‘Boo-shay,’ and it was ‘Boo-shay,’” Buche said. “But when my great-grandfather was working out on the Yankton Sioux Reservation, Lake Andes there, his Lakota friends just kept calling him ‘Boo-ee,’ so he just left it.”

His great-grandfather eventually built the business to approximately 21 stores before the Great Depression nearly wiped it out. Only three survived.

“But he managed to pay every invoice on time,” Buche said. “That’s the integrity of this four-generational company that I’ve grown up with.”

Team Buche Cares formally became the nonprofit arm of G.F. Buche Company in 2014, but Buche views its work as an extension of what the family business has done for generations.

“We have been helping out our friends and neighbors in rural and tribal communities for nearly 121 years,” he said. “We’ve always had a very generous heart when it comes to rural and tribal communities.”

That assistance is not limited to scheduled food distributions.

About 10 months ago, a major apartment fire in Kyle displaced approximately 22 families. Buche said the organization was able to locate donors and deliver household goods and food to displaced residents the following day.

Rapid response is one part of the mission. Reaching the people who need assistance most remains one of its greatest challenges.

“Probably the most difficult part is that we get out to the right places and we can help the people who have difficulty getting there,” Buche said. “It just kind of breaks my heart when we do our best. We pride ourselves in being able to get food right out to the people.”

South Dakota’s geography makes that easier said than done.

“You can’t be everywhere all the time,” Buche said. “That’s probably the most difficult and challenging part, making sure we go to the right places and that we are able to get the word out to get the people fed.”

Team Buche Cares also supports local food pantries through matching contributions, provides financial assistance to people facing cancer, funds Underdog Foundation scholarships, supports nonprofit organizations and promotes healthy food initiatives.

Its work extends beyond charity into advocacy. Team Buche Cares has pushed for fair-pricing legislation, hosted Federal Trade Commission representatives so they could see underserved rural communities firsthand and remained involved through G.F. Buche Company with the National Grocers Association.

Carrie Sanderson serves as executive director of Team Buche Cares and oversees statewide operations, partnerships and strategic initiatives, including work involving government, nonprofit, tribal and private-sector organizations. Ellie Highstreet, director of development, works on fundraising, capital campaigns and community partnerships.

Team Buche Cares is governed by a board headed by Buche as founder and president. Other board members include Vice President Shelly Day, Secretary/Treasurer Heath Kooiman, Eric Sinclair, Travis Kasten and Brian Gilbert.

Much of the money supporting the work is raised through two annual hunting events near Gregory.

Rooster Roundup, scheduled for Oct. 7-8, combines a guided pheasant hunt, VIP event, dinner, auction and fundraising program. A second event, Steelers in the Field, is held in late March and has featured Pittsburgh Steelers players, including Sioux Falls native Mason McCormick.

Buche said Rooster Roundup was initially designed around a simple objective: helping families have Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

“I am a big believer that everybody deserves to have a meal like the rest of us,” Buche said.

Team Buche Cares may have become a formal nonprofit only 12 years ago, and the Mobile Hunger Hero may be newer still, but the philosophy behind them dates back to that first family grocery store at Lake Andes.

For Buche, hunger is not an abstract policy problem. It is a person who needs something to eat tonight.

“There should not be any person in this state or country who goes to bed hungry,” Buche said. “That is what I have made my mission.”

(James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of OST. Contact him at skindiesel@msn.com)

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