A “closed” sign appeared on the front door of W-2 Quality Meats over the weekend with a message from business owners Steven Wieneke and Troy Wietzema.
“We appreciate that you have chosen to do business with us. It has been our pleasure serving you,” the sign said. “Unfortunately, we’ve made a hard decision to close our Luverne location. Our Worthington location remains open if you need anything.”
The owners said their decision was driven entirely by a staffing challenge they couldn’t overcome.
“We lost our full-time guy and we couldn’t find adequate help,” said Wietzema. “There are just no meat cutters. It’s a dying trade.”
Nathan Kraft had been cutting meat full time for W-2’s Quality Meats, splitting his hours between the Luverne and Worthington locations.
Kraft is starting his own business in Milford, Iowa, and purchased the east coolers and some equipment that was in the Luverne meat store.
Wieneke was full time in Luverne and Wietzema was full time in Worthington. Without their meat cutter, the partners felt closing the Luverne shop was their only option.
Their decision comes nearly seven years after opening in Luverne in March of 2014.
Wietzema said the decision to leave Luverne wasn’t driven by lack of revenue.
“We’ve had a good seven years,” Wietzema said. “It wasn’t the city of Luverne, it wasn’t the patrons. Our meat cutter’s last day was Saturday and we had a decision to make.”
The company leased the corner lot building at Main Street and Highway 75 from Luverne Properties, which is a group of local investors working to generate more traffic and retail business in the community.
The group learned of W-2’s plans to close only a week before it happened. “That was a surprise,” said Mike Cox, one of the seven investors in the corner lot.
He said it was disappointing, but he understands the reasons.
Now the group is turning its attention to recruiting a new tenant for that space.
“It’s the best piece of real estate in town,” Cox said, referring to its gateway location for Luverne’s downtown and South Highway 75 corridor.
“I thought we had the perfect business. We loved the idea of a meat market being in there,” Cox said.
The Worthington store is located at 362 West Oxford Street, and the phone number is 507-376-4001.