James Gaida recalls coming to a local locker plant after school and trying his hand at harvesting a bull. Now, that 15-year-old has turned 41 and finds himself the vice president and a three-way partner of that business which features two locations just south and west of Wichita, Kan.
The company is called Stroot Lockers, named after Leonard Stroot, who founded the business in Colwich, Kan. Leonard’s sons Fred and Vince bought the Goddard location and later a site in Mulvane. They closed the original Colwich location. Gaida runs Stroot Lockers with his two co-partners Justin and Doug Stroot, grandsons of Leonard.
Next month Gaida anticipates cutting the ribbon on the expanded Goddard location, which will grow to 10,000 square feet from its present 3,500-square-foot size. The other location in Mulvane will remain in operation.
“We won’t really have a grand opening until we have tweaked everything the way we want it to be,” Gaida said. “There is a lot of thought ahead when you are expanding from a 14’x16’ retail area to one that will give us 1,300 square feet of space for retail alone.”
Tenuous beginnings
James, Justin and Doug took over the ownership in 2019 and faced some serious challenges right from the get-go, including the global pandemic.
“It was horrible trying to get people who wanted to work,” Gaida said. “But we knew our customers needed more food than they could buy at the larger supermarkets or Walmart that didn’t have the capability to give them a week or a month’s supply of the basic meats they wanted to take home. But it was also a turning point when shoppers wanted to know where their meats and foods were coming from.
“We were very fortunate that we sourced most of our meats from area farmers who Stroot Lockers had dealt with for years and we were able to have a good supply line. Sure, there were problems like labor, energy costs, insurance and getting supplies, but we learned to know our customers better and they knew then what we represented to them.”
Stroot Lockers wasn’t just offering meats, but some of the top-shelf meat products in the United States. Gaida is the current vice president of the Kansas Meat Processors Association and can honestly boast about a wall full of award plaques from meat competitions in the Jayhawk State, including three grand championships in a single year. But he can also toot his horn about how his products have fared in the annual American Cured Meat Championships.
In that competition, Stroot earned grand championships for meat snack sticks, hotlinks and heavyweight bacon entries. Gaida said that they started with some stock recipes for their value-added items and then “added a few things to make it even better.”
The Goddard, Kan., location does about 14 hogs per week, and the Mulvane location custom processes approximately 12 hogs per week. (Source: Stroot Lockers)Processing powerhouse
While Stroot Lockers may be a great place to shop for meat, it’s also a great market for area livestock producers to get their animals processed at either location. That end of the business is clearly the greatest revenue generator for this state-inspected enterprise.
The Goddard location currently processes about 15-18 beef and 14 hogs a week, while the shop in Mulvane handles about 60 scalder hogs a week, plus 12 beef and 12 hogs for custom processing.
Another major component for the company is its game processing prowess. They handle about 3,000 deer processing orders a year and are willing to take in animals with hides on, need caped, and processed into steaks, roasts and chops or into items like summer sausage, salami, pepperoni, deer bacon, jerky, links or even chili cheese hot links.
Gaida noted that the partners are reevaluating some elements of the business. For example, the Mulvane location will be phasing out frozen storage locker rentals and the Goddard expansion will allow them to do barbecue at their expanded retail area. They also carry sauces, rubs and spices. Filling those voids may be concepts like offering ready-to-eat rotisserie chicken. The Mulvane shop has been serving a Saturday barbecue but is ready to put more chips on another boon to their bottom line — a complete barbecue ready to go home with customers.
To whet shoppers’ appetites, their website, strootlockers.com, shows off what this Kansas meat business can really do. They include a 30-minute video put together from a supply store in Wichita called “All Things Barbecue” on how to do barbecue with some flair, including details on cutting, rubs, injection and flavoring, time and temperatures. You might be tantalized by their Red, White & ‘Cue or beer can pulled pork techniques. You could say it’s “showing off,” but it’s simply their way of letting people know the work, detail and heart they put into what they’re doing. Recounting the challenges of the pandemic, the stakeholders made it a point to let customers know more about what they do and how much they care about doing it right. An excerpt from the company website exemplifies how important that commitment is:
“When you think of barbecue, the ‘Cadillac’ is a roasted hog. It goes by many names: pig roast, hot roast or luau. When you do something well, they say whole hog, and that’s what you get when you get a scalded hog from Stroot Lockers.”
Smart selling
Like many small family operated meat plants, Stroot’s finds the meat bundle option a popular way to market their many meat products.
A few choice selections in that arena include a 42-lb steak bundle for $190 or 20 lbs for $95. They offer a variety meats bundle for $135 for 18.5 lbs, and then there’s their $75 sausage bundle that includes 21 lbs of breakfast sausage, links, hot links, original bratwurst, brats with cheese and German sausage.
Stroot Lockers does well with gift cards for their products, but they also remember to say thanks to their community by using them to support high schools, churches, or other charitable groups on their fundraisers. And those unsold hams and turkeys from the holidays are given to a local diner that provides free holiday meals to those in need of help.
The company’s history dates back three generations and 40 years of processing beef, hogs and deer. They still offer customers beef halves and quarters, whole or half hogs.
Gaida acknowledges that with 20 employees and two locations to cover, he and his partners have their hands full and will see more changes coming. He’s already thinking about considering USDA inspection to possibly expand his marketing area and become more of a regional supplier.
