Waseda Farms opens additional retail store in Door County

Cheryl Hentz

Contributor

May 19, 2025

STURGEON BAY – Just a year after a new owner took over the reins of Waseda Farms, the operation has opened its third retail store – this time at 4020 Hwy. 42 on the north side of Sturgeon Bay.

The store is located in suite two of the building, sharing a location with Grandma Tommy’s, which sells a wide variety of Door County specialty foods, wines, microbrews, local produce and fruits when in season, among other Door County products.

Jeff Shefchik said this is the first new store he’s opened since he became owner of Waseda Farms in 2024.

The location, Shefchik said, offers an opportunity for folks to obtain Waseda Farms’ products without having to drive so far.

“A lot of the local customers are excited we now have the store in Sturgeon Bay because they no longer have to go all the way to Baileys Harbor, which is another 20 minutes or so north of Sturgeon Bay,” he said. “It’s also creating convenience because now we’re on a main highway.”

Shefchik said this store serves as the jumping off point for “continued expansion of the Waseda brand and to make it more convenient for people to eat healthy.”

That said, Shefchik said he is not planning on opening any other stores at this time, but instead said he wants to build off the three current retail locations.

“I think we can expand our sales a lot just with these three locations,” he said. “So, it’s more of building the brand with these locations and then with our online sales and wholesale.”

A peek inside

Within the 2,000-square-foot retail space, Shefchik said customers will find all of Waseda Farms’ meat products – grass-fed beef and grass-fed organic beef, pork and chicken – as well as its organic eggs.

“We also carry a full line of grocery and produce items,” he said. “It’s not everything like in a typical grocery store, but we have a lot of different things, like cereals, snacks (and) some bakery-type stuff, and a lot of it is in that organic or health-food area.”

Shefchik said not only does the store carry a full line of steaks, it also stocks Wisconsin-raised brats, burgers, hot dogs, sausages, roasts, bacon, snack sticks and a wide variety of meat.

Furthermore, he said the store stocks fresh, seasonal produce grown on the Waseda farmland, locally made artisan cheeses and dairy products and specially selected jams, honey, maple syrup and other pantry staples and specialty items. 

In addition to consumables, Shefchik said the store has Waseda Farms apparel – mostly caps and shirts complete with Waseda’s tagline: “Trust where your food comes from” – a reference to the farm’s organic foods and focus on sustainable and regenerative farming.

Chicken expansion leads to ‘egg-sponential’ growth

Since purchasing Waseda in 2024, Shefchik said he continues to maintain the approximately 900 acres between owned and rented land in Door County and his 2,600-acre cattle ranch in Missouri.

Though it hasn’t expanded in terms of land, Shefchik said Waseda has tripled the number of laying hens it had since April 2024 – going from 3,000 to 9,000.

He said he rented a barn in Door County to house the additional 6,000 chickens. 

“We will continue to grow our egg business with a new barn we’re building,” he said. “This summer, we are building a barn that will hold 20,000 chickens. That barn will open up in November.”

Joining the operation’s 3,500-square-foot barn, Shefchik said the new barn construction will bring Waseda Farms’ total chicken barn space to 20,000 square feet.

The new barn, he said, will be built on the same Baileys Harbor farmland but in a different location.

Shefchik said though it’s often believed that the color and nutritional content of eggs are determined by the chicken – in reality, “it’s determined by what the chicken eats.”

“Different breeds of chickens lay different colored eggs,” he said. “That’s how you get white, brown, green and blue. Most people consider a brown egg a healthier egg than a white egg, because historically, organic eggs are brown eggs. But again, the color has nothing to do with the nutritional content of the egg.”

Because an egg’s nutritional content is determined by what the chicken eats, Shefchik said Waseda Farm chickens have access to pastures year-round – where, besides grass, they have access to clover, bugs and worms.

Additionally, he said they are fed a mixture of organic grains. 

“We do put a couple of extra vitamins and minerals in there to help pass some of that through into the egg,” he said. “If you look at our eggs compared to conventional eggs when you crack them open, you’ll see that our yolk is a brighter yellow than conventional eggs.”

All part of the plan

Shefchik said the new store and the increased number of chickens they have is a continuation of what he said a year ago when he bought the business – “which is to continue to offer our healthy products and grow the business so that we can provide quality food to more people.”

As the business grows, he said, so does the Waseda staff.

Thus far, Shefchik said Waseda Farms has added six part- and full-time employees to work in the store.

Later this year, when construction is completed, he said the plan is to hire more people to work in the new chicken barn.  

The Sturgeon Bay store is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays.

For more information on Waseda Farms, check out its Facebook page or wasedafarms.com.