Thanx to Chuck Ellis who passed along this article announcing the partnership of Hy-Vee food stores and Maid-Rite sandwich shops that will place the loose meat sandwiches in at least five of the Hy-Vee convenience stores within the next few months. The first one opened Monday in Omaha at the Hy-Vee convenience store on 156th St. (see map)
Hy-Vee has over 220 grocery stores in soon-to-be 8 states in the Midwest, with the first Wisconsin location going up in Madison in 2008. They have 77 convenience stores that sell gas and "get-and-go" items. With the high price of gasoline, a number of convenience store owners and companies have turned to alternative sources of income to shore up profits.
Maid-Rite franchised stores have been been adding locations at the pace of one every two weeks. The Maid-Rites in the five Hy-Vee convenience store locations will be franchisee owned and will seat about 25 to 30 people. Normal start up costs for a Maid-Rite franchise is about $275,000 dollars. However, the ones that are going to be located within the Hy-Vee convenience stores will only cost about $150,000.
Already, a number of Maid-Rites have opened up in Wisconsin-area convenience stores owned and operated by the Riiser Energy corporation of Wausau, WI. Riiser Energy runs over 25 R-Store convenience stores in Central and Northern Wisconsin, and hopes to open 60 Maid-Rites in Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan by 2016.
Hy-Vee is the powerhouse grocery store chain in the heart of the Midwest. Maid-Rite is a brand that has been around since the mid-1920's when the first Maid-Rite opened in Muscatine, IA. However, since the Maid-Rite chain was bought by a group of investors headed by Bradley Burt in 2002, the quality - in my opinion - has dropped tremendously.
The biggest reason is that Burt has mandated that all franchisees buy the loose meat directly from the Maid-Rite corporation. Burt found that there was little uniformity between the over 80 Maid-Rite shops when he took over. He set out to change that.
Maid-Rite cooks the loose meat at their facility, they freeze it, then ship it to individual franchises. The stores defrost the meat, then heat it up on the bun in microwave ovens before they're served. Burt says this allows for uniformity in the quality of the Maid-Rite.
Yeah, as in uniformed shitty tasting sandwiches...
What I would call traditional Maid-Rites, such as the one in Newton, IA, they cook their loose meat in big steamer bins. The meat is made fresh - and in the case of the Maid-Rite in Newton, it's ground on site. The result is a loose meat sandwich that is moist and flavorful. I've found the corporate franchised Maid-Rites to be dry, dull and flavorless.
(Newton Maid-Rite. Picture courtesy of Jim Burke)
We were back in Newton recently for the funeral of my uncle, and we went to the Newton Maid-Rite for lunch. Dan Holtkamp, who has owned the Newton Maid-Rite for 38 years, told us that he and Taylor's Maid-Rite in Marshalltown, IA, and the Marion Maid-Rite in Marion, IA, are holding out from using the corporate made meat. "The way they're doing it is not a real Maid-Rite."
My cousin, John, was at the Maid-Rite in Newton the day before we ate there and he was talking to a gentleman who used to own two Maid-Rites in Eastern Iowa before the Bradley Burt takeover of the chain. The former Maid-Rite owner told John that he didn't like the direction the Burt organzation was taking the Maid-Rite name. Instead of cow-towing to the new corporation mandate of serving frozen meat that was thawed, the guy told John he just shut his doors.
He told John, "Once every couple of weeks I come to the Maid-Rite here or to the one in Marshalltown. They're the only two true Maid-Rites that are left."
Dan Holtkamp is holding out as long as he can. Since the original Muscatine Maid-Rite closed a few years ago, the Newton Maid-Rite is the oldest continual Maid-Rite location in the world. Dan's corporation, Dan Mister, owns the Newton Maid-Rite. He's set to retire soon and possibly sell it off to another person, hopefully someone who can keep the in-store cooked Maid-Rite tradition alive. But to me, the corporate franchised Maid-Rites are soul-less shells of what Maid-Rites used to be.
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