Visitors to Dave’s Meat Market in Yorkville will find the usual cuts of beef, pork and chicken awaiting them behind the counter, but the shop has also become renowned for its beef sticks, making more than 30 flavors over the years of the smoky, chewy snacks.
Tayler Schomer of Plano has been coming to the meat shop for a decade, and over that time “has tried at least 10 different flavors.”
“My favorites are the sweet and spicy and I also like the garlic cheddar,” Schome said during a recent afternoon visit. “I know other people make beef sticks but these are the best I’ve found, the best ones in this area. I like them for driving in the car, watching a movie or having a snack when I’m hungry.”
The butcher shop at 1175 N. Bridge St. includes a whole separate meat case devoted to the beef sticks. Owner Dave Wellehan of Yorkville, 50, says the sticks are the result on his own culinary experiments he has been conducting for the 25 years the shop has been open.
“There never was a butcher in my family, and I was in the bar and restaurant business doing bartending and helping and managing and I got into helping all the cooks when I was young,” he said. “I’d be helping them with the prep and cutting up meats and come up with stuff and the next thing you knew I was doing some culinary school and I learned all this stuff and decided, hey, this would be a great place for a meat market in downtown Yorkville.”
Wellehan said he really loved what he was doing and “kept reading and learning and putting in lots of hours.”
“I didn’t want to do a restaurant. I enjoyed all the different cuts of meat and it’s just a joy cutting all the meats and coming up with different things we can do” at the shop, he said.
“Making the sausages and making the beef sticks, it’s just a great time,” he said.
Wellehan said the shop originally sold the usual butcher fare but that requests from customers for summer sausage began rolling in and he complied.
“We said sure, we can do anything, and I bought a hand stuffer and a hand crank and talked to a couple other meat guys and they gave me some tips and I started trying it,” he said.
It wasn’t long before the beef sticks started being produced.
“I bought myself my first little smokehouse and I was there every morning at 5 a.m. hand cranking these sticks out,” he said. “Now we have two automatic stuffers that shoot them out and we have a couple $100,000 smokers that are cranking these things out. The smoke inside these sticks is what makes these so good.”
Wellehan has help in the production department from employees like Ashley Pisarski of Big Rock who came on board in April.
“I was a customer here for seven years and ate the beef sticks – they are a quick, easy snack. They are high protein and you can take them anywhere,” she said. “I love to take them hiking, going fishing, they are a carry-all snack. We make about 75 pounds a day, five days a week. The first 15 customers here this morning it was all they bought.”
Roger Moore has worked for two years at the shop and said from start to finish, “each stick takes about four to four-and-a-half hours to make.”
“We make a batch – 25 pounds at a time – and it takes that long to make a batch,” he said. “This is one of the more labor-intensive things. It takes time. You got to extrude it, shoot it, smoke it. Every week we come up with something different because you’re not going to know until you try it.”
The top three sellers over the years have been a jalapeno-cheddar, the Italian beef stick that includes “the cheese, the beef flavor, the au jus, the giardiniera flavor” and the best seller, by far, the honey barbecue pineapple.
“I’m telling you, 100%, hands down, that is our best-selling beef stick,” Wellehan said. “When I sit down to make a new flavor – at this point, it’s trial and error. The people in my work are always coming up with different stuff. We’ve taken insights from other customers who have tried beef sticks (elsewhere) and we ask what it tastes like and we try it. We try to keep this fun and family-oriented.”
The most out-of-the-box flavor that still sells is a dill pickle flavor. A few notables that didn’t last included ventures into fruit that included blueberry, strawberry and a cherry stick.
“We tried all the flavors because of the honey barbecue but, overall, they didn’t work,” he said.
Like many customers, Schomer admits he likes to try different flavors and frequently asks what’s new. During his most recent visit, he tried a new concoction that was called “You Name It.”
Over the years, Wellehan estimates he has made more than 30 flavors of beef sticks. Some, he admits, didn’t make the cut for long while others “just keep selling.”
“At this point, I’d say 30% of our business is devoted to the beef sticks. People come into the butcher shop and if they buy a steak they’re going to leave with a pound of beef sticks and we’re always sampling out the new ones,” he said. “We’re always having fun with different stuff. They are 100% pure angus beef. There’s no filler, no additives to it.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
