The West Central Tribune's Tom Cherveny, one of Bluestem's favorite Greater Minnesota news reporters, contributed a fine piece, online Sunday, about local food monument, Carlson Meats. The 100-year-old business has helped feed folks from the youngest souls to the Dalai Lama.
Cherveny writes in Grove City is local foods destination:
It was a few decades ago and Chuck Carlson’s dad was crossing the Canadian border when the officer saw his Grove City address and told him: That’s the town with the meat market where he gets his best meat.
Only recently, his son’s mother-in-law was shopping for potato sausage in Phoenix, Ariz., when the man next to her felt obliged to inform her: “I know where you can buy the best potato sausage in the country. It’s a little meat market in Grove City.’’
It’s also where Chuck Carlson continues to make potato sausage according to the recipe that his grandfather made his own 100 years ago.
Chuck and Kristin Carlson are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Carlson Meats in Grove City under the ownership of the Carlson family. William Carlson purchased the business in January of 1913. He stayed with the business until his death in 1954.
His son, Willard, returned from service in World War II to work alongside him. Willard and Luella continued the business to 1983, when third generation owners Chuck and Kristin Carlson formally took over. Chuck got started in 1975, one year after marrying Kristin, the co-worker he had met at Glacier National Park. Chuck said he had returned to help out “for a while.’’
Not all of their customers arrive from locations as far-flung as the Canadian border and the Arizona dessert, but many do come a ways. Carlson Meats is one of only a couple of dozen small- to medium-sized processing facilities in Minnesota that are United States Department of Agriculture Inspected plants.
Producers of everything from buffalo and lamb to yak for the emerging local foods market rely on Carlson Meats for their processing because of it. The yak man has his pastures north of Cold Spring, where he once served the meat to the visiting Dalai Lama. . . .
Check it out at the West Central Tribune.
Photo: A old interior shot of the shop, via Carlson Meats.
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