LIFESTYLE
“Team Buche Cares became formalized in 2014, but I would argue that my family has been out here doing the same thing for 121 years.” RF Buche
In July 2024, Buche Foods and Pass Creek Tribal Council Representative of the Oglala Sioux Tribe Anna Halverson collaborated to launch a summer food program, feeding 28,000 children across the nine districts of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. “We fed 6,700 kids two meals per day, seven days a week for about 16 weeks,” said RF. This passion for helping the people of South Dakota is also how Team Buche Cares came to fruition in 2014 as an official charitable arm of GF Buche Company. It all began when a little girl was diagnosed with leukemia in one of the communities they served. “One of her wishes was to go swimming with the dolphins, and so we did a promotion selling water so she could fly down to Florida and swim with them,” recalled RF. “After we did that, my team was like, ‘What else can we do so we can affect more people,’ and so we would start selling cases of water, and they would do random challenges with me to hit fundraising goals.’” After being challenged to do a 115-mile bike ride through their stores, RF says he couldn't
walk for two days and decided there had to be a better way to raise funds, hence the creation of the 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization,Team Buche Cares. The team just wrapped up their third year of their biggest fundraiser, The Rooster Roundup , which takes place early October at RF’s hunting lodge in Dallas at the Cock Block Lodge . In 2025 the non-profit raised just around $2 million and has fed over 600,000 people since its inception. At last year’s Rooster Roundup they had a Wópila ceremony where they took sponsors and gave them a star quilt, along with having grass dancers. Meaning “thank you” in Lakota, RF says it was special watching them be given a star quilt in the circle from the Oglala Lakota Nation. “It's a symbol of gratitude and goes back to when the warriors would go out to battle or hunters would go out, and you'd have a successful hunt or battle,” said RF. “They would drape you in buffalo hide, and so now that’s symbolized with the blanket. There were probably about 180 there last year for that ceremony, and I'll bet there were 160-plus in tears.”
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