Mountain View Meats
Location: Stilwell, Okla.
Owner: Mike Phelps (Pictured with daughter, Courtney Talbot)
History: Mike Phelps of Mountain View Meats in Stilwell, Okla., comes from a long line of family members in the meat packing industry. Mike’s father opened Mountain View Meats in 1973 eventually offering custom processing in 1974. “We started selling hot links and smoked sausage six or eight years later,” Mike said. “We are strictly going with the products we make. We are up to about 50,000 pounds a week of product now.”
Products: Mountain View Meats produces boneless and bone in hams, Arkansas bacon, smoked pork loin and five different kinds of links. “Every year we like to come up with a new one. Our hot link is the most popular and the biggest seller. We sell to retail chains, restaurants, concessions and we also do private label,” Mike added. “We are a full service sausage kitchen,” Courtney Talbot, Mike’s daughter and the third generation in the business said. “We are the only ones that make the Mountain View Hot Link. Our family came up with the recipe 40 years ago. You are able to find them in just about any grocery store in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri,” she added. “We have only been retail for six years since Courtney came to work for us. So we are new to retail customers under the Mountain View name,” Mike said.
Quality: “They are beef and pork only. We believe in quality,” Mike said. “Every batch is sampled by an employee. If there is a problem, we want to know it then,” Mike said.
Philosophy: “Our goal is to keep a Christ like attitude and focus. We want to keep growing, create more job opportunities here in Stilwell, and grow the Phelps family legacy with the Mountain View brand,” Courtney said. “We had a guy in Florida call that had two guys from Oklahoma work in his franchise. He has 140 barbeque places in Florida, Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina and Georgia. He calls us up out of the blue asking for one of our products. We send them samples and a year later, we are sending a truck load,” Mike said. “A lot of it is word of mouth. The product speaks for itself,” Courtney said. “Our products are kind of like a best kept secret right now. We are trying to get them to be a household name,” Mike said.
