Meat is meat is meat, right? Wrong! And you never realize just how wrong until you meet Wooster resident Bob Workman, owner and operator of Bob's Quality Meats on East Bowman Street. In matters of providing meat for your family's dinner table, Bob and his hard working staff have literally put the "Q" in the word Quality. From a shop with a long, proud history, Bob is heir to the finest meats you'll find in the local area. During a recent guided tour of his facility, Bob tipped his cards to reveal one of Wooster's best kept secrets;
This store started out as a small neighborhood grocery over sixty years ago carrying an assortment of canned goods, fresh produce, and fresh meats. The originals owners sold the store to Paul Eicher after Paul completed his military service. I began working for Paul in the early sixties and I worked for him until I was eighteen and ready to make my own way in the world. Paul was a good guy and he was very helpful in shaping my future. Years later, he contacted me and offer to sell the store to me but it wasn't the right time in my life so he sold the store to Bob Szala. Bob had been down on the south side of town at Wooster Food Market but was pushed out during the Urban Renewal. Bob owned and ran the store for the next twenty-three years until I bought it from him in 1996.
After buying the store, we changed the name to Bob's Quality Meats, removed most of the dry groceries, and added a twenty-four foot fresh deli counter. We've expanded our selection of Italian items because the area east of the store and to the south was considered to be the old Italian community in Wooster. Even though there are still a lot of Italian families still living in this area, there wasn't any store in Wooster carrying Italian items so we decided to fill this need. We became involved with the Lamplighters to help support the Italian community and they do a very fine job supporting us, too!
A year ago, we went to the State of Ohio Department of Agriculture to see what our chances would be in getting this store under the state's meat inspection program. We had many customers who wanted us to wholesale our meat products but there are very strict requirements for wholesalers. The State provided the guidelines we'd need to follow and we started construction to meet those guidelines. We're now Meat Plant #1280 under Ohio's Meat Inspection and we're qualified to wholesale our products to any restaurant, hospital, retail store, or organization that prepares food for resale. In addition to our Ohio meat inspection, we also have a Wayne County Health Department inspection that we're required to pass. Every piece of meat we sell through our retail counter or that we wholesale comes from a federal or state inspected plant directly to our facility which is inspected by both the state and the county. We're the only store in Wooster qualified under Ohio's Meat Inspection program so we are probably one of the safest places right now in Wooster to buy meat.
We make over a dozen different types of fresh sausages and we also smoke and cure meat, make our own jerky and beef sticks, a lot of our own lunch meats, and our own roast beef and turkey. Customers who want to get away from all the chemical in their lunch meats can feel assured that they aren't getting that amount when they buy from us. We prefer to make our products in smaller quantities and more often rather than trying to get longer life from our lunch meats by adding a lot of preservatives. Since we produce our lunch meats in smaller quantities, we really appreciate when customers wanting larger amounts place their order in advance.
We've become pretty well known for our own smoked hams. Over the holiday season from Thanksgiving to New Years, our meat was on over one thousand tables in Wooster as hams, standing rib roasts, pork roasts, and crown roasts. Our selection is enormous and customers wanting special items always come here to us. They may go to the supermarket meat department fifty weeks out of the year, but when they need a special item or a special cut, they come here to get it. We're the only store in Wayne County that has an in-store spiral ham cutter and during the holidays, the demand for our hams is so great that we usually sell out well before the holiday.
We make our own jerky and we also sell Uncle Mike's jerky. Mike is the son of the previous owner of the store and Uncle Mike's was originally developed right here before he opened his plant. Rather than trying to duplicate the same product, we've elected to sell a different type of product and produce a black pepper jerky, turkey jerky, and a chicken jerky to appeal to people who are on low carbohydrate diets or low fat diets. Our beef sticks and beef sticks with honey are excellent and we have people drive from Cleveland, Ashland, and Millersburg just for those items.
In our in-store smoke house we produce our own smoked meats such as four different styles of smoked sausages, smoked pork loins, and a smoked prime rib that is very popular with our customers for their Christmas dinners. During the Cajun holidays we make Boudin and Andulli.
We sell sides of beef, quarters of beef, half hogs, and whole hogs that we custom cut to our customers' specifications and we also sell bundles of meat. Our customers order their bundles in advance and we custom cut according to their preferences before placing the bundles in the freezer until they're picked up.
We deal with USDA choice meats, Ohio grown pork, and Ohio grown chickens. We try as hard as we can to make sure everyone gets their money's worth when they shop here. Even the local supermarkets refer people who are looking for specialty items to us. Our goal is to be extremely honest and up-front with our customers. I'd rather talk a customer out of something that I don't feel is of value to them than to talk them into something that I don't think has any value. We're not here just to sell items and make a profit and I believe that our customers appreciate our concern and what we're trying to do for them. We know most of our customers by their first names and we know their families and their pets. Everyone here is very friendly and looks at our customers as old friends, just like a neighborhood store should!
Now that you've learned one of Wooster's best kept secrets, isn't it time to show your family what real meat is all about? Stop by Bob's Quality Meats today and don't forget to tell them that The Advocate sent you!
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