“It’s a place we’d like to go visit again

“It’s a place we’d like to go visit again,” he said. “We enjoyed it there.” Now back in Wisconsin, Beachy and his family spend their days making quality products for customers who appreciate custom butchering. “A lot of our work is simply cutting up meat – steaks, roasts and ground meat – but then we also do seasoning, especially with sausage,” he said. “We do brats and seasoned sausage in one-pound bags.” Fair Cut Meats also smokes hams, bacon and snack sticks. They’ve had a good response so far to the pigs they’ve processed, Beachy said. “Word’s getting around,” he said. “People say ‘So-andso told me that you do hams and bacon, and they’ve turned out real good.’” Most of the products made by Fair Cut Meats come from animals brought in by the customers, but Beachy said they can also find pork and beef from outside sources. As a custom butcher, Fair Cut Meats returns all of its customers’ meat directly back to them. “We do not sell meat here,” he said. “We’re not licensed for that.” Wisconsin’s deer hunting tradition also feeds into the Fair Cut Meats business model. “Venison is another thing we do,” he added. “More in season than out of season, but people bring it in throughout the year and me make summer sausage.” Beachy said they like to get their customers’ deer skinned out within a week or so, but if they’re not frozen, they want to do it within a day or two. The deer will hang in their cooler for a week or more before they’re deboned, bagged and stored in a freezer. “Once we’ve done that, we’ll kind of go back to pork and beef,” he said. “As we get windows of time, we work on the different products.” Beachy said he told his customers last year to expect about a month before their venison was ready, but if they were to get busier, that turnaround time could stretch out a little longer. He said they have a 20-pound limit on the size of batches they produce. When it comes to beef, Beachy likes to add some extra time in the process to improve the quality of what his customers get back. “That’s something maybe not a lot of butchers do, but we let it hang for two weeks,” he said. “It ages the meat and makes for tender roasts and steaks. It’s the enzymes at work. It’s a controlled aging process that makes the meat much more tender.” To flavor his products, Beachy orders spice mixes and makes a few of his own. He said they make his brats taste better than anything you can buy at a convenience store. Beachy said Fair Cut Meats focuses on cleanliness, affordability and strong customer service, which draws in meat-lovers from as far away as Merrill. “We want to take care of our customers,” he said. “I suppose everyone does, but if there’s a problem, we want to make it right.” Looking ahead, Beachy said his son Arthur is getting to know how to use the butcher’s knife, which will “make a big difference on the cutting table.” “That’s probably one of the biggest things that pushed us into starting this: it’s a family operation,” he said. “We can work with the children together.” Fair Cut Meats can be reached by calling 715-613-2781. The shop is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.