Meskwaki Inc., the business arm of the Meswaki Nation based in Iowa, announced it is pursuing other interests beyond its casino and bingo hall. Meskwaki Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Hubble said, “We hope to provide a much broader array of choices for the next generation coming up. I think we’ll start to see a broad diversity of occupations rather than the limited opportunities in some form of government or gaming.”
Hubble said the tribe will open a 30,000 square foot factory and warehouse near the 25-year-old Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel and the Meskwaki Travel Plaza in Tama. The facility will produce Meskwaki-branded cigars, cigarettes and e-cigarettes. Meskwaki has been in the tobacco business for decades. It sells Native-made and commercial brands of cigarettes at its Tama travel plaza and introduced its own Renards brand in 2015.
However, the tribe is investing heavily in its vapor products line due to the drop in the number of smokers. Since 1990, the percentage of Iowans who smoke has declined by 10 percent, according to America’s Health Rankings data. In 2016, 18.1 percent of Iowans were smokers. Hubble said sales of traditional cigarettes have dropped by 20-30 percent in the past few years at tribal-run convenience stores. I’m suspecting a fair amount of that is transitioning over to e-cigarettes and e-vapor. Cigarettes are a slowly, but definitely, declining revenue stream,” he said.
