Rice Furniture and Appliance

Tall, quiet and self-assured, Steve Rice, the third-generation owner of Rice Furniture and Appliance, offers a welcoming smile to all who enter his store. Outside his office, he has hung several pictures depicting the history of the family business and, as he begins to tell the tale, he lifts one off the wall.

In 1945, his grandpa Wilbur opened an auction yard on what were then the outskirts of McMinnville using money earned from splitting cedar posts. “Auctions were huge community events,” recalls Steve, “and people came from everywhere.” By the early 1950s, Wilbur had relocated. The city was growing and traffic had become an issue. Indeed, the picture Steve is holding shows the auction houses, stockyard and original furniture store surrounded by some fifty now-classic cars.

For Steve, keeping up with the times has not meant sacrificing customer service, a cornerstone of the Rice philosophy set in place by Wilbur himself. “If he was going to sell you a sofa, he would flip that sofa over and show you every nail and every spring,” Steve says. The result has been a legacy of strong customer loyalty and community ties. A recent shopper told Steve that she’d bought her first recliner from Wilbur in 1954.

Steve grew up working alongside his grandpa, tarring roofs and maintaining the auction buildings. “His work ethic was work,” Steve says, and it was a lesson he learned well. While brokering a deal with Lowe’s Home Improvement to develop a store on the family property, Steve also built a new building for Rice Furniture. When it was ready, they didn’t close down for a week or even a day. They filled 30,000 square feet of showroom overnight, while Steve’s friend and artist, Rod Axell, put the finishing touches on one of the store’s many murals.

Having grown up in McMinnville, Steve can vouch for all that the city has to offer. For retailers, it’s a hub of trade. For families, it’s a small city where small-town values still matter. And for hikers, hunters and fishermen, it’s close to the mountains and the ocean. “It’s just a great place to live,” Steve says.