Award-winning meat products a cut above the rest

Cheryl Hentz

Contributor

March 17, 2025

PIGEON FALLS – Though Falls Meat Service has changed hands a few times over the last 50 years, it has always been a family owned business – an aspect of the Pigeon Falls business that remains true today.

The local butcher got its start in 1974 when Howard and Barb Olson bought a meat locker business that had been attached to a general/grocery store business in Pigeon Falls.

Upon purchasing the business, the Olsons built a new building that became home to Falls Meat Service, which was founded that same year by Howard and his brother-in-law, Verdell “Del” Helstad.

“There was a packing house in Whitehall, which is near Pigeon Falls,” current owner Tim Brueggen said. “So, there were a fair amount of meat cutters in the area. That’s how Del got his start (at a different packing house).”

After about four years, in 1978, Brueggen said Sue and Mike Lyga – Howard’s daughter and son-in-law – took over Del’s share of the company.

“Mike had worked at the packing house previously, so he and Sue were partners with Howard and Barb,” he said. “In about 1998 or 1999, Howard and Barb retired, leaving Mike and Sue as sole owners.”

Today, the meat service business is owned and operated by Brueggen and his wife, Stephanie.

And though they’ve only owned the business since 2012, Brueggen said he started working there under the previous owners six years earlier.

He said he was first introduced to the Lygas through his brother, who used to be married to their daughter.

“That’s how I got involved in the business to begin with,” he said.

Brueggen said the business is also veteran-owned these days.

“I was in the Army National Guard for 10 years and did two deployments to Iraq,” he said.

Brueggen said his wife, Stephanie, started working full-time at the company about four or five years ago after leaving her position as a school administrator for a local school district.

Today, Brueggen said he is involved with the processing end of the business, while Stephanie handles things on the retail side, as well as the accounting, advertising, website and social media management and some of the wholesale ordering.

Reason for longevity

Brueggen said many of the shop’s 18 full-time and four or five part-time employees have been with Falls Meat Service for years and their dedication to professionalism and producing great products is a big reason for the company’s success.

“I also think having a local economy that’s pretty strong helps,” he said. “We’re farm-based here, so we always have beef and pork available to us and we’re not having to rely on outside sources.”

This was especially noticeable, Brueggen said, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There were grocery stores and such that weren’t able to get some products because they relied on distributors, where we’re getting it direct from the farmers,” he said. “So we got a big push during that time. Just having a local source of goods for us was important for us (to keep going).”

Success, Brueggen said, can also be partly attributed to Falls Meat Service’s wide range of offerings.

“We’re fairly diversified in that we do butchering and processing,” he said. “We also do venison processing, and we do all of our own sausage-making. We’re one of the few full-service butchers in the area. Plus, we do both retail and wholesale, where we wholesale to about 45 stores. Sometimes, when one thing slows down, another one picks up, or at least it covers your workforce for you.”

Brueggen said the wholesale side of the business includes many gas stations, grocery stores and restaurants – all to whom they deliver to one day a week. 

Falls Meat Service, he said, also offers customers a daily lunch special, which is freshly prepared in the shop’s commercial kitchen. 

“We started doing the lunch specials last spring,” he said. “It’s a fairly well-priced meal, and it’s very easy for the employees to put together.”

Brueggen said it includes products that Falls Meat Service makes and also includes side dishes.

“Customers can either eat it here – we’ve got a few tables and chairs – or they can get it to go,” he said. “We cook lunch for our employees every day. My wife always likes cooking food for everybody. If we have a slow day and don’t sell all the lunch special meals, we can serve them to our employees the next day… so we never have to worry about having any kind of waste. We’ll use it either today or tomorrow.”

During the warmer months, Brueggen said Falls Meat Service also operates a food truck.

He said they purchased the Sow Belly’s BBQ Food Trailer about four years ago – with this upcoming summer being the food trailer’s fifth year of operation.

Brueggen said Sow Belly’s BBQ Food Trailer services about a 100-mile radius, offering a variety of sandwiches, including pulled pork, pulled brisket and bacon-topped mac and cheese, along with their famous Sow Belly Spuds. 

The Sow Belly’s BBQ Food Trailer used to set up shop at some public events, but Brueggen said it was too hit-or-miss to be profitable.

So, today, he said they only focus on taking the food truck to private events like weddings, graduation parties, employee appreciation lunches and events where there’s a set number of people they’re going to serve.  

“If it was just my wife and me running it and cooking all the food, I think it would be alright, and we’d make some money doing it,” he said. “But when we’re paying other people to do it for us, we have a certain dollar amount that we want to hit in order to make it worth our time. That’s why we kind of weeded out some of the other public events and focus on the ones we know we’re going to do well at.”

Adding on to existing building

With growth, Brueggen said, comes change and part of the change for Falls Meat Service involved a 4,000-square-foot addition – which was completed about 18 months ago. 

Included in the addition, he said, was a new retail and office area.

“We had retail before, but it was just in the older part of our building, and it was a much smaller space,” he said. “When we did the addition, we added new space, and the retail was included in that new space. The old retail area was remodeled into a packaging area.” 

Including the new addition, Brueggen said the entire building is just less than 12,000 square feet.

Importance of USDA inspections

Brueggen said Falls Meat Service is USDA-inspected and because of the variety of things it does, there is usually an inspector at the facility every day. 

“Anytime we do anything that’s going to go out for sale to the general public, it has to have an inspection stamp on it,” he said. “That allows me to be able to ship those products anywhere in the U.S. and it guarantees that we follow the right rules to make it safe for anybody to consume.”
The handling of animals and humane practices being used in the butchering and processing aspects of the business, Brueggen said, is also something important to customers and is something on which Falls Meat Service employees are well trained.

“All of our guys who work on the kill-floor have gone through the Humane Handling course through the University of Wisconsin-River Falls (UWRF),” he said. “That teaches them how to work with animals, move animals around and what the most effective ways to (put down) the animals are. We get audited every year about humane handling, and the guys we have here who do that, do a really good job.”

Brueggen said the Humane Handling Institute (HHI) at UWRF was established in 2022 to support the meat industry.

Through education, research and outreach, he said the HHI helps train personnel with critical skills and knowledge.

Recognition for products, expertise 

Brueggen said Falls Meat Service is known for its award-winning sausages.

However, he said the shop has been the Wisconsin State Grand Champion for several of its other meats, as well.

Brueggen said the shop has been recognized for its superior products at the Specialty Meats Championship during the annual Wisconsin Association of Meat Processors Convention in Middleton – one of the largest product shows in the nation.

He said he loves his work, mainly because there’s such a variety of things they do.

“It never gets repetitive because every day you’re doing something a little different,” he said. “And it’s really a skilled labor – it’s not something that a lot of people know how to do, and it takes time to learn all the different aspects of it.”

Brueggen said he not only knows all the aspects of the job, but he has also personally been recognized for his knowledge and skill in his field, having graduated from the Master Meat Crafter program in 2016.

This program, he said, is a highly regarded and first-of-its-kind meat industry training program offered by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Meat Science and Animal Biologics Discovery program.

Brueggen said the two-year program is designed to provide participants comprehensive knowledge of meat science, food safety and meat processing principles.

As Falls Meat Service begins its sixth decade in business, Brueggen said it strives to continue to provide excellent customer service and help lead the meat industry in the State of Wisconsin.  

He said the team also stresses the importance of buying local and supporting the local economy. 

“People should look for good quality products when buying anything,” he said. “I think the quality of the work we do makes us stand out from others. We have a lot of good products – we’re really well known for our brats and bacon. We also have a world-famous meatball mix that was actually purchased with the business back in 1974 – that’s kind of a big product for us.” 

Falls Meat Service is open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 7 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.

For more information, visit fallsmeatservice.com.