4 A’s Meat Processing
Owners: Rick and Kelli Adams
Location: Exeter, Mo.
Business: 4 A’s Meat Processing
History: “I had drove a truck for 14 years when the company I was working for was bought out,” Rick Adams said. “That was when my wife Kelli and I decided it was time to get out of trucking and start a business of our own. Since I had always been a hunter and processed my own deer, cattle and hogs, we visited multiple meat processing plants to become acquainted with different designs and business practices. We then designed and built our own facility on a portion of the 17 acres, that already contained our house and cattle and hog operations. Another advantage of starting from scratch is we were able to select equipment that we felt best met our needs instead of using someone else’s equipment resourcefully. Finally, we were fortunate enough to hire a once retired meat cutter with 52 years experience as a mentor as well as an employee. We have never heard of many of the cuts people request, but he always knows exactly what they mean and our customers get exactly what they want. We opened in June 2014”
Products and Services: “We offer farm meat butchering which means beef, hogs, sheep, goats and buffalo, but no poultry. We offer a pickup service or the customer can deliver the animal to us. Unless customers request a different hanging time, beef usually hang for 14 days with hogs, sheep, and goats hanging for four to five days. We cut the meat on the last day of hanging and freeze it so it is available for customer pickup the following day. We cut all meat according to customer preference, which may include choosing the amount of ground meat, pork cutlets instead of ham or any of our own special sausage blends including breakfast, summer and Italian sausage, as well as brats. We also have a separate room for smoking and curing meats which naturally require longer processing times. An additional service is custom smoking hams and turkeys for special occasions such as holidays though the customer must bring us the meat because we sell processing services not retail meat. Finally, all of our products are vacuum sealed.”
