Elma Locker and Grocery wins 8 state awards

Local business wins Grand Champion for lunch meat, sausage

By Amie Johansen, amie@charlescitypress.com

Elma Locker and Grocery recently won eight awards at the 80th Anniversary Convention and Trade Show put on by Iowa Meat Processors Association. The trade show was held in Ames, Feb. 18 – 21.

The event was well attended by approximately 175 people representing 40 processing plants. Cured Meat Competitions were held with the top entries taking home plaques.

Placements went in the order of Grand Champion, Reserve Grand Champion, Champion and Reserve Champion, Roger Meirick, co-owner of Elma Locker & Grocery, said.

Meirick was happy to come home with eight awards, of which their luncheon meat and small diameter smoked sausage earned the top placement of Grand Champion.

“This is our biggest year,” he said.

For the past nine years, Elma Locker & Grocery has participated in the IMPA convention. Elma Locker has taken earned awards in the past, but never so many.

Meirick and his employees entered 18 different meat products. The goods are judged teams of twenty professionals from Iowa State University and several other universities as well as some industry experts.

“Cosmetics, texture, color, and 50 percent of it is flavor,” Meirick said of the graded categories.

The grading scale ranges from zero to 1000 points. Flipping through the score cards, Meirick pointed out several categories where Elma Locker’s product earned well over 900 points, but did not win a placement. In other categories, the product scored in the 800s which was enough to take home a plaque. The difficulty and severity of the competition varies each year depending on the participating lockers.

Meirick and his employees do not undertake a ton of preparation for the trade show.

“You do a little extra stuff,” he said of the products they enter. “Everything comes out of the (meat) case except the flavored bacon.”

This year Meirick entered raspberry-chipotle bacon in the flavored bacon category. There it sizzled its way to a Reserve Champion plaque.

Meirick was proud of his locker’s success, and credited much of it to his employees.

“All of (the employees) put something into it,” he said.