
July 22, 2024
ALMA – One could make the case that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
In the case of one West Central Wisconsin beef producer, a particular breakfast sandwich may represent the most important meal of the business’ first decade.
“Make an egg and put it on a bun with some cheese,” Heidi Berry, co-founder of Unparalleled Farms, said. “It’s just an egg slider.”
Though it’s “just” a breakfast sandwich, Berry said, it effectively managed to keep Unparalleled Farms afloat.
After she and her husband/co-founder Tony had to have their entire herd of beef cattle culled following an accidental herbicide exposure in 2019 – due to a mismanaged delivery to a neighboring, conventional farm – she said, “we survived on selling egg sandwiches for three years while we built up our herd.”
“It was the most devastating experience,” she said. “But you can’t lament what happened. The only way for a business to grow is to move forward.”
For 10 years now, Berry said Unparalleled Farms has continually persevered – from a small side project to selling its pasture-raised beef products and business-saving egg sliders at Minnesota farmers markets, to its current iteration as a brick-and-mortar, farm-to-table market store in Alma.
Throughout Unparalleled Farm’s tenure, Berry said she and Tony have always maintained the core values of sustainability, community partnership, quality, transparency, animal welfare and integrity – even when faced with adversity.
“It was a testament that we can do hard things,” she said. “It taught us there’s a lot of value in the product we were delivering.”
An inspired mission
Berry said Tony – “the best farmer I’ve ever met” – comes from a multi-generational farming family and facilitated the 2014 formation of Unparalleled Farms while the two worked with an organic dairy farm near Eau Claire.
Beyond their ethical standards for producing quarters of beef to sell, Berry said customers appreciate their custom butchering – which was inspired by her extensive background in the restaurant industry.
“We were going for more of that steakhouse cut and appealing to customers who were looking for something more than the farm-direct beef available at the time,” she said. “We weren’t sure how it was going to go, but folks were impressed with the product.”
Berry said Unparalleled Farms remained a smaller project until 2017 when they joined the Minneapolis Farmers Market group to sell their beef, as well as prepared concessions, including farmhouse burgers, brats, BLTs and of course, egg sliders.
“Everything was right from the farm, focusing on bringing that high-value farm product to the customer in a way they haven’t had the opportunity to experience before,” she said. “I think there’s a disconnect for people not knowing how simple it can be to enjoy high-quality organic food. We think it’s somebody else’s responsibility.”
Berry said customer support for the farm and its ethos continued to grow as organically as their cattle-raising methods.
Through the markets, she said she and Tony developed connections and friendships, fostered deeper consideration of food sourcing and encouraged everyone that a healthier diet isn’t as hard to achieve as they might think.

To this day, Berry said the relationships with repeat customers are the greatest reward of Unparalleled Farms, which she said brings with it a sense of communal responsibility.
“These are the people whose lives we’re enriching by bringing them these products and helping them understand you can do this yourself – you can eat high-quality food,” she said. “It’s super simple. We have to make things accessible for people so they can change the paradigm and take ownership of their food supply. I think we’re doing that one person at a time, and we get to see the same people each week.”
That strong connection and regular interaction led to a mutual loyalty, Berry said, and when the aforementioned integrity of Unparalleled Farms resulted in a lack of available products from 2019 through 2021, “the majority of our customers who had been waiting on the sidelines were ready to order again.”
Going all in on Alma
Following the herbicide exposure debacle, Berry said they decided to relocate to better regrow their herd and their business.
She said Tony found certified organic farmland in Alma perfect for running their operations, enabling Unparalleled Farms to prepare a full, triumphant return for the 2023 market season.
However, Berry said, after all the years of traveling and operating at the Minneapolis markets and others throughout Minnesota – all while she and Tony raised their five children – a vacant storefront in Alma suddenly caught their attention and got them thinking.
“Everybody’s getting older, lives are changing and there are so many moving parts that something stable was starting to sound good to me,” she said. “We went ahead and had a realtor show us the store, and it’s everything you would expect in a 100-year-old market store – hardwood floors, big ceilings, gorgeous and old. We thought, ‘okay – let’s get it done.’”
Berry said being located in a brick-and-mortar store meant the business would no longer be subject to farmers markets’ weather dependency nor the confines of a May-to-September timeframe.
The store officially opened Memorial Day of 2023, she said, and stayed open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through the week before Christmas when they celebrated with an event featuring Santa Claus visiting with kids at the store.
Berry said she and Tony – who have always worked full-time jobs in addition to running Unparalleled Farms – were then able to experience some respite by reducing hours of operation during the winter months.
Though the building’s present lack of a kitchen prohibits offering the prepared food once vital to Unparalleled Farms, she said the store presents the opportunity to offer Alma a general store further stocked with local crafts and products from like-minded vendors – based on connections from her and Tony’s farmers market network.
“We call them ‘partner farms,’” she said. “We’re blessed to have 10 genuine, authentic, farm-based farms contributing to the products in our store. We’ve met these people face to face in some capacity and trust who they are in terms of ethics, sustainability, welfare and integrity. Those are the core values we want to bring forward as we’re growing Unparalleled Farms as a brand and as a brick-and-mortar.”
Berry said the store can offer vendors’ products – such as Wisconsin cheese, wild-caught Alaskan salmon, organic coffee and bolted flour – as passionately cultivated as Unparalleled Farms’ dry-aged beef and other products – and just as reasonably priced.
“We rarely have people having trouble choosing because of a price point,” she said.
Selling the beef frozen helps to lower costs, Berry said, and selling it directly from the store (as opposed to shipping) allows them to personally guide customers regarding the different cuts and how to cook them.
“We like to do local delivery because there are people in our area who are shut in for whatever reason – an accident or physically unable to get out,” she said. “We want to make sure that food is accessible to those people as well.”
Berry said she and Tony’s children often help with the store – the eldest of whom inspired Unparalleled Farms’ name and serves as motivation to make the business succeed.
“The oldest of our children has Down syndrome – trisomy 21,” she said. “There are three copies of the 21st chromosome, and the chromosomes aren’t parallel. We’re looking to create an opportunity where in the future, we’ll be busy enough to create a job opportunity for our daughter and possibly others. Unparalleled Farms – not only does it mean an outstanding product, but it has a dual meaning for us.”
Berry said their goal is to always have a product that’s a step above.
“Where it’s excellent quality – but then also reminding me as I’m working toward this after my day job, or during my lunch break and all the other things – the end goal is to grow our business enough so I can create meaningful employment opportunities for (our daughter) and a couple of her cohort,” she said.
Though there are layers of significance within the business – changing the food paradigm and supporting her family and community – Berry said these layers can only be built upon the foundation of relationships with Unparalleled Farms’ customers.
“The people are the payoff,” she said. “We have the best customers – so many of them are repeats and come with great questions. I feel like we’re helping solve that dilemma about the disconnection with food.”
Unparalleled Farms – 325 S. Main St. – is open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays from May to mid-December.
Visit unparalleledfarms.com for more information.