Location: Hattieville, Ark.
Owners: Allen Gullett and Johnny Gullett
History: Gullett’s Custom Cuts was started three years ago by brothers Allen and Johnny Gullett. Following in Allen’s nearly three-decade career as a meat cutter, the brothers decided it was time to open their own facility.
“We opened it, mainly, so I could cut meat the way I wanted,” Allen said. “I wanted to put out the quality I wanted, not the way someone else wanted it done. I can let it hang however long I think it needs to hang.
“Quality isn’t something you get much of anymore. I worked for 13 years in a grocery store, and you cut what you get in, and you can’t pick and choose what’s on sale or what isn’t on sale. Sometimes it’s good stuff; sometimes, it’s not. We run everything top of the line, and there isn’t any guessing. If you run a top-quality product across the board, people don’t have to worry if what’s on sale is the good stuff or the other stuff.”
Products and Services: Gullett’s Custom Cuts offers custom beef, pork, lamb and goat processing. About 20 animals are processed a week, mostly beef.
Working with local beef and hog producers, Allen said they can offer customers custom quarters, halves and wholes. They also process several deer during hunting season.
In addition to custom processing, Gullett’s Custom Cuts has a retail side. Cuts for the retail store are cut from USDA-inspected box meats.
“We sell a lot of retail items,” Allen said. “We’re kind of out in the country, and the little town nearby is Hector. They used to have a grocery store there for years. The man who owned it passed away about five years ago, and we picked up a lot of their business. I was unsure because we are so far out in the country, and I told Johnny I didn’t know if it would be worth it or not, but he talked me into it. It has gone really, really well.”
Specialty items include in-house-made summer sausage, and smoked ham, bacon and jowls.
“We also take our breakfast sausage, then stuff cream cheese, cheddar cheese and jalapenos in the middle, then smoke it; we call them Coon Eggs. We also do a lot of bacon, cheddar and jalapeno hamburger patties.”
The specialty “buckboard bacon” produced at Gullett’s is also popular.
“You take a shoulder, butterfly it open, then sugar cure it, smoke it and slice it just like bacon,” Allen said.
The specialty items are available to custom processing customers and at the retail counter.
Future plans: Gullett’s Custom Cuts and the Gullett family are hoping to continue to see business growth and hope to add another location sometime in the future.
“We’re hoping to build another facility closer to where I live around Perry County,” Allen said.
