STAFF - From Dean Morgan, Chris Devetter, Carter Fischer, and Breanna Karsten. Star Eagle photo by Melanie Piltingsrud
By MELANIE PILTINGSRUD
Staff Writer
Dean Morgan is far from retiring after selling Morgan's Meat Market in New Richland to Dan and Bud Lewer. Instead, he purchased Lou's Meat Market in Waseca, and in so doing, has come full circle.
“This was where I started working,” says Morgan as he sits in the break room of what will now be the new home of Morgan's Meat Market. Bob Lou opened Lou's Meat Market in Waseca in 1983. “I started working here in '86.”
Morgan attended school in Pipestone to learn meat cutting in the mid '80s. He learned butchering, per Morgan, “pretty much on the job,” from Gerald Hullopeter, who bought the New Richland meat locker in '68. The New Richland meat locker exchanged hands a few times and was finally closed when Morgan bought it and opened Morgan's Meat Market in 2003. Now, with over 120 awards under his belt for his meat products, Morgan's business was thriving.
“We didn't even have it for sale,” says Morgan. “[The Lewers] approached us at the end of February. Honestly, it was a real tough decision. The store becomes a part of you, and it's like a child; you nurse it up from infancy, and you just see it growing. Every year, you just saw that store grow.
“Dan and Bud are probably two of the only people I ever would have sold it to,” Morgan continues. “They know what it takes to make a business successful. They know it's going to be a seven-day-a-week job, going in at midnight, [or] 2 in the morning to empty the smoke house out. Just like any business, you have to have a passion for what you do, and they definitely do.”
According to Morgan, once the decision was made, the transaction went down really fast. “In March we made the deal, and by the time we got done with all the paperwork [...], we signed the deal on May 3.”
The sale was contingent upon Morgan being able to purchase Lau's Meat Market in Waseca. Morgan approached Bruce Barrie, the owner of Lau's Meat Market, to ask if he were interested in selling. He was, and Morgan is the proud new owner of the Waseca based meat market.
Barrie will be helping with the franchise until the end of the year. “He's making quite a few programs for us on the computer that's going to make running the shop a lot easier,” says Morgan.
“When we sold our shop, [the Lewers] took over that day, and I was out,” says Morgan. “I still stop in there once a week. They're awesome guys.
“This shop is different from New Richland,” Morgan continues. “New Richland's set up for custom processing, whereas this one's not set up for custom processing. This shop is set up more for retail, even though New Richland's got a fantastic retail area, but the people that built that for me down there, are the same ones that are building the one here in [Waseca] to redo the retail area.”
Morgan plans to keep working with Neighbor's Meats in New Richland; he hopes to have them do the butchering for Morgan's Meat Market in Waseca by this fall. “They're going federal inspection, and we are, too,” says Morgan, who shares the Lewers' vision of providing customers with locally grown meat that is butchered and processed in the area as well. “People want to know where their meal came from,” says Morgan. “They don't want to […] just pick something off the shelf and have no idea where that meat came from. They want traceability. My goal is to someday have a sign out in the retail area that will say, 'Today's meat brought to you by,' for example, 'Lewer Farms' or 'Wilson Farms.'”
Being federally inspected means that Morgan's Meat Market can create its own private labeling for sausage, and get that product out into stores. “And we're not that far from Iowa, so, by going federal, as opposed to what they call E2 or Equal 2 [the state's version of federal inspection], you can go anywhere in the continental US.”
Morgan is a great believer in working together and making connections. As such, he already knows of businesses in Iowa that want to sell his product. “That's the thing with a lot of businesses,” he says. “People are surprised when you say you're going to work together with another meat shop. They always think you're in competition with each other. And the thing is, I'm really good friends with them, I'm really good friends with Conger, [and] Dean that runs the Smoke Shack over in Geneva – awesome guy, Schmidt's up in Nicollet – standout people. You just get to know them all. And if you get stuck on something, if you get hung up on an issue, whether it's with inspections or an employee issue, you can call them, and they will more than likely have had the same thing happen. We're considered a very small meat processor. If we all work together, it's more than one place out there supporting us.
“I've had people that go hunting up north [when] it's really warm up there, and they can't bring the meat down this far, because it's too warm and it will spoil,” says Morgan. “They call me and ask me, 'What shop would you recommend up north?' and I'll just recommend shops of my friends that are up there.
“For two years I was president of the Meat Association,” Morgan continues, “so you get to know all these people, and who they are and how they run their shops, so I have great confidence in them.”
Morgan has had his shop recommended as well. When the Nicollet meat market stopped butchering beef, they called Morgan to ask if they could send their customers to him. “That made me feel really good that they trusted me with their customers,” says Morgan. “If I was one that kept to myself and didn't work with other meat processors, they would have never called. The more you network yourself, the more you're going to grow.”
Morgan has worked with meat processors in other states as well, such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. “When you go out that far with your networking, now you're in a completely different customer base,” says Morgan. “Their tastes are different.”
But Morgan isn't afraid to work with meat producers from different areas to create new recipes. If a customer is looking for low-sodium bacon, for example, he'll call John Frohling out of South Dakota, one of the top sausage developers in the country, who knows how to tailor flavor profiles to suit each area. “You don't just start taking salt away from bacon,” says Morgan. “You've got to adjust your entire recipe, so that, when you bite into something, the spices and the seasonings hit your tongue in a certain order. That was all foreign to me until I bought that shop [in New Richland].
“With some people, they just buy a pre-mix,” says Morgan. Meat producers wanting to make bratwurst have the option of phoning a seasoning company to get a pre-mixed bratwurst seasoning that they can just pour into their meat mixture. Morgan doesn't work that way. ”It does not set you apart from the very next person who's doing the exact same thing,” he says. “So we make ours from scratch – our jerky, our bacon, hams, brats, snack sticks, summer sausage – all that's made from scratch.
“A good example is during deer season,” Morgan continues, “and it's hectic, it's busy, you've got two big holidays mixed right in with it – Thanksgiving and Christmas. And they love deer hunting, but they need something low in sodium. And it's easy; I just go into my recipe book and I've got my low-sodium recipe, and we just make it from scratch, and it works out fantastic. The customers really appreciate that you work with them that way.”
Morgan ran the meat market in Waseca for two weeks to learn the flow of things there before closing its doors for renovation on July 12. Now, the retail area has been gutted down to the bare walls. “We're putting new flooring down. We tore down my grandpa's hay barn, and we're using that wood on the walls.” Lou's Meat Market also had a false ceiling that has been removed. Now that the ceiling has been raised by about four feet, Morgan plans to hang “barn-looking chandeliers” from it. “We kind of gave it a farm twist,” Morgan says of the renovations. New meat cases are also being installed, and according to Morgan, the whole retail area will be bigger and more customer friendly. “We're hoping that people like it,” he says.
The renovations are not just surface deep. Some of the electricity has been rewired, and all new furnaces and air conditioning are being installed. Lou's was also short on freezer space, so Morgan is having a large freezer built.
Morgan plans to have everyone's favorite products from both Morgan's Meat Market and Lau's Meat Market available for sale. “Obviously, there are some things that we just can't make, but we're going to try to make it as close as we can,” says Morgan. Some of the Morgan's Meat Market recipes were sold with the store in New Richland. “When I sold the store, I had over 300 recipes.” Morgan explains that he was able to work with the Lewers on which recipes each party retained. “A person can have the same recipe, but it will taste different just because of how it's smoked, how it's cut. But we're going to keep all of Lou's recipes,” Morgan stresses. “We've had a ton of people ask about that. We're going to have all of Lau's homemade stuff, plus all of ours. So we're going to have over 200 products in the store. So it's like shopping at two meat shops at once.
“Bob's [Lou's recipes] are completely different than mine,” Morgan continues. “They taste awesome. I feel that ours taste just as good, but they've got a different taste to them. I think both recipes, whether it's Lou's or ours – I think they're both really good.”
Having now worked in the meat industry for 36 years, Morgan says, “It's not work if you enjoy it. I enjoy it – the sausage part of it, the competitions, the retail case, the interaction with everybody. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't have bought another shop after we sold that other one.”
Morgan's Meat Market at 1100 2nd Street NW, Waseca is now open as of Aug. 2 for customers to stop in to see the renovations, and purchase their favorite Morgan's and Lou's Meat Market offerings.
Morgan's Meat Market will be hosting an open house on Aug. 14 from 8 a.m. - 1 p.m., and will be giving away a 1/4 of beef and 1/2 a hog as door prizes.