Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Get grilling
Richard’s Country Meat Market offers meals to go, hand cut meats
High quality and courteous service are at the heart of Richard McGinnis’ business philosophy. The 40-plus year veteran meat cutter and entrepreneur worked for large grocery chains for years before deciding to step out on his own and stake a claim in the area’s hand-cut meat market business. That was 25 years ago. The market today is a family affair. Richard, his son, his wife and a nephew all pitch in to make Richard’s Country Meat Market a local favorite. Richard began his career at the Tontitown Mercantile while still a student at Springdale High School. “I just turned 62,” he laughed. “I started when I was 16.” Richard’s wife makes some sides here and his oldest son is general manager. Richard has a have a nephew in-law that’s his son’s right hand at work. Richard said he knew that he would need an edge to compete with large grocers.
“I knew that a small market couldn’t compete with grocery stores on a price level,” he explained. “We had to find something that we could be better at then anyone else. We thought that the logical place to go would be quality and service.”
While the Market’s initial focus was providing high quality hand-cut meat to order, about 10 years ago he decided to branch out and get into the ready to go meal game. He installed a full kitchen and started creating a long list of ready to go take home entrees, side dishes and deserts.
“We put the kitchen in to compete with restaurants and grocery stores that were giving people an option other than always cooking them selves,” he said. “We try to keep them where they are a good price for our customers. We sell a lot of our $5 meals to go and we rotate those around with three different ones available each week. We have about 12 we use and they are really good. Our homemade bread is more popular than just about anything. Our lasagna, chicken Parmesan and eggplant Parmesan are great for full entries. We sell a lot of our buttered corn, green bean casserole and, what we call our fork-style green beans, which are cooked in wine and bacon.”
On the side
Selling side dishes to go is a large part of Richard’s retail trade.
“The sausage macaroni and cheese is probably the best selling of those out of the freezer. “They come frozen. We make them and freeze them. They are in microwavable containers so people can just pop them in the microwave. We probably sell the mac and cheese more than anything. We sell the dickens out of it.”
Desserts are a big seller, too.
“We have a ton of desserts,” Richard said. “Our two best sellers are our banana pudding that we make from scratch and our chocolate mousse. The tiramisu is right behind. We have six or seven varieties of homemade pies, too.”
The Market’s everyday entrees, $5 meals and hand-cut steaks, chops, seafood and deli platters are hot sellers yearround, he said.
Richard also offers Cajun fried turkey dinners, sliced meats by the pound and boneless ham dinners and dozens of side dishes, desserts and breads to go.
Richard cautioned: “Get those specialty orders in at least a week before the date it will be needed.” Sure, ready to go meals are a popular item at Richard’s, but meat is still what keeps many of his loyal customers coming back.
“The main to know is that we always have steaks and other cuts in the meat case,” he said. “But we are always to happy to cut them however a customer wants. We have a lot of customers who walk in and don’t even look at the case… they say ‘cut me three ribeyes like this’ and they show us how thick. We do as many custom cuts on Saturdays as we sell out of the case and are happy to do it.”