Nice to Meat You: Backstreet Market
Cooking has always been the way Tami and Greg Stadtherr bonded with their family. With Backstreet Country Market, the tradition continues on through their daughter Tina LeBrun and her husband Kyle, their four children, and the cattle they raise on their farm.
The name Backstreet Country Market comes from the restaurant Tami used to own twenty years ago, which went by The Backstreet Café. Located behind a quilt shop, the entrance to their restaurant was in the alley. Seeing as they live on a gravel road and operate their business from their home in Gibbon, Minnesota, the family felt the name still fit for their farm to table enterprise.
A turning point for the family was one afternoon at the farmer’s market when a man used his entire weekly paycheck to purchase packs of their meat and promised to return when he was paid again.
“He could go and get anything, but he wanted to take his budgeted paycheck for our meat,” says Tina. “We know we have a good product, we’re a little biased, but to see someone want to take their budgeted allowance and put it all into our meat was like a huge shock to the system. We were like, now we know we have a good product.”
The cattle of Backstreet Country Market are naturally raised. Unconfined and able to roam about the pasture, their cattle are free of growth hormones and implants.
“We’re treating these animals with respect and with care,” says Tami.
Their cattle are grass fed and grain finished, which is what makes them stand out compared to other beef products.
“A lot of people will come to us and say, ‘we didn’t have the best of luck with grass finished beef, why is your product so good?’”
According to Tina, the grain finish is what makes their product different. That and their beef is dry aged, meaning it hangs for 18 to 24 days allowing the beef to tenderize which maximizes the flavor.
“People don’t realize how fresh this is,” adds Tami. “What they’re buying in the grocery store is just not even comparable.”
Even when quarantine restrictions were lifted and restaurants reopened, people continued to return to Backstreet Country Market for their meat.
“They learned from the pandemic that what they get from us is not even close to what they get at the store,” says Tina. “Even if it’s someone trying to pinch their pennies, they know if they’re going to spend this much money on food it’s going to be good.”
Their quality of food is something even the kids who go to school with Tina and Kyle’s children have picked up on.
“We pack lunches every day and they get shanks, or brisket or whatever in their lunch and the other kids will ask, ‘what do you got today?’” laughs Tina.
Included in some of their bundles are recipes courtesy of Tami, who enjoys cooking and caters events on the side. As the owner of over 400 cookbooks, there’s no one better to suggest a good recipe. She knows customers are busy, which is why she puts together easy meals that take around 45 minutes to make, only require a few ingredients, and are darn near impossible to mess up.
“That’s also what is great about our meat,” says Tina. “You don’t have to do much to it at all. You can cook it however you’re comfortable with and have it taste good because it’s a good product.”
Each member of the family has a role in the business. Although specific duties have never been assigned, it’s an unspoken rule to pull your weight and help out wherever you can.
Like one Christmas when Tami broke her leg. She couldn’t help assemble or deliver products, but that didn’t stop her from folding boxes from her wheelchair, trying her best to still pitch in.
And when they say every member of the family is involved in Backstreet Country Market, they mean it. A poster that’s often displayed at their farmer’s market booth is of Tina’s son holding onto a stack of meat sticks with the biggest smile on his face.
“We use their cuteness sometimes to push meat,” jokes Tina.
The kids enjoy being included in the family business. They bring their beef sticks to school as treats for birthdays and gifts for teachers. Tina’s son loves their snack sticks so much he even named his first calf Beef Stick when he started 4H.
For Tina, she always knew she wanted to farm as, “it’s just been in my blood for ever and ever.” She had no interest in going to college.
It didn’t come as a surprise to her parents who also grew up on farms. Her father was raised on a dairy farm and her mother on a grain farm, although Greg likes to tease his wife by saying she’s from the “suburbs of Lafayette” as she didn’t come from a traditional farm with livestock.
However, Tina’s parents were adamant she further her education.
“They threw me out of the house,” jokes Tina remembering back.
“We didn’t throw her out. We made a deal,” laughs Tami. “We said if she went to college, she could come back and milk cows. That’s not really throwing her out is it? It’s kinda giving her the incentive to come back.”
That’s exactly what she did after receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture Science from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and a Master’s degree in Agriculture Education from the University of Minnesota. Every day Tina says she’s grateful for the “deal” she struck with her parents.
Outside of her duties with the farm and Backstreet Country Market, Tina is a Farm Business Management instructor at South Central College in Mankato, Minnesota. She works with 50 farmers providing what she calls her “unbiased viewpoint” of all the things they should be aware of from record keeping to succession planning.
Although the family has a history of farming, Tina and Kyle are first generation beef producers when it comes to raising beef cattle. For Greg who has cared for dairy cows on the same farm he was born on, the decision to stop dairy farming was a difficult one.
“I truly believe through all my education and experience working with farms, it just wasn’t possible at our size of farm to be profitable as a dairy farm in this generation,” says Tina.
Farming isn’t an easy business to break into and for first generation cattle farmers, most days are filled with struggles.
“I do feel there are a lot of days where I’m like, ‘why are we doing this?’” jokes Tina. “You don’t have a lot of reward or pay off at first because everything is a risk. You have to overcome the high cost of getting established in the cattle industry.”
Between startup costs and the uncertainty that comes with farming, challenges seem to loom around every corner. There are so many “what if” scenarios that are out of the family’s control. What if the weather takes a bad turn? What if a calf gets sick? What if the packing plant doesn’t pay a fair amount? As Tina describes, there’s no room for error.
“There’s more down days than up days really,” says Tina. “Which only makes any positive things very rewarding.”
The biggest positive outcome for Tina is knowing she’s teaching her children the value of hard work, something Tami agrees with.
“It’s just nice to see my grandkids liking it,” says Tami. “Even my son who lives in town and the two grandkids from him, they love coming out to the farm. I think that’s what makes me feel the best. They all feel at home here and that’s a good thing.”
The support they receive from their customers means everything to them. Their satisfaction is not only what propels them through tough times, it’s what they love most about their business.
“People really like what they’re getting from us,” says Tina. “And we like that. I can’t go to the store and get what we produce. When people like what we’re doing, it makes it easier to keep doing it.”
It’s what drew Backstreet Country Market to The Meatery. Whether it’s food for celebrations or just day to day, they want to expand their business and serve people beyond their community.
“I think if we can bring what we share in our own family to other people, nothing would be greater,” says Tina. “As we teach the kids every day, these calves are born with a purpose and that purpose is to hopefully feed the world. That is our reason for doing what we do every day.”
In order to do that, “we’ll just have to get a few more freezers is all,” jokes Tami with a smile.
