Ramblin': Meat for the holidays fuels pork cooperative

DYERSVILLE - Last year, the Holiday Sampler gift pack sold for $45. This year it's $39.

The Premium Sampler is down from $41 to $37; the Brat Party Pack, from $34 to $28; the Variety Pack, from $28 to $25.

You get the idea.

In a down economy, Delaware County Meats, for its 10th Christmas season, still wants to increase business.

When it began marketing the high quality meat gift packs in 2000, the cooperative of a dozen area pork producers sold $5,000 worth. Last year, volume increased to $45,000. Manager Dave Kronlage hopes to top $50,000 this year, about 10 percent of the company's $500,000 in annual sales.

“Meat prices have dropped, and we've picked up some efficiencies,” he says.

Such are the ups and downs of operating your own business, one in which the owners take hogs to a processor and assemble the gift packs in a garage.

Yep, on Monday mornings, you'll find today's 10 owning families in Dave's garage filling orders. They pack the frozen meat with dry ice into Styrofoam shipping containers to send them early in the week so they stay as fresh as possible in transit.

“We've shipped to all 50 states,” Dave says.

“It's a good way to get our name out there,” adds Mark Klaren of Worthington, president of the cooperative.

A decade ago, with hog prices around $10 a hundredweight, the group came up with a plan to ensure stability and longevity. They also wanted to eliminate the middle man to increase profits.

“At that time,” Dave says, “there was such a discrepancy in what the farmers were getting for their hogs and what people paid for it in the store.”

So since the beginning, Delaware County Meats has sold its products in grocery stores - 75 at the moment.

Center stage at this time of year are the gift packs of bacon, brats, pork chops, shredded pork and tenderloins.

Once, the group approached Omaha Steaks, known for mail order meat. But the owners were rejected because their products tasted too much like pork.

What?

Pork should taste like pork. Anybody, like me, who loves breaded pork tenderloins knows that.