My mother-in-law's longtime companion died unexpectedly in his hometown of Strawberry Point, IA a few weeks ago and my wife and I went up to the funeral that was held on a hot Monday morning. After the burial at a local cemetery and the fellowship lunch in the basement of the church where the funeral service was conducted, we decided to head out back toward the Quad Cities. But - and as bad as this may sound - the ulterior motive of going to the funeral was that we had to make a stop in the small town of Edgewood, IA - about nine miles from Strawberry Point - so we could pick up some meat from the Edgewood Locker.
Tom Kerns started out his post-military life as a young farmer. He and his new bride, Joan, lived on a farm near Oelwein, Iowa for three years before moving to the Edgewood area to farm there in 1961. Tom continued to farm while Joan was a registered nurse. In 1966, an opportunity to buy a small meat locker in downtown Edgewood came about and the Kerns jumped on the opportunity. Initially, there were just two employees - one full-time and one part-time. But within four years, the Kerns grew the business and they had to relocate to an old creamery on the north side of Edgewood. With the help of their sons Terry and Jim, the family renovated the creamery into a meat locker/butcher shop.
Terry and Jim joined their parents as partners in the business in 1980 and over the next 15 years they expanded the business into specialty meats, catering, venison processing and they opened a retail meat counter during this period. As their reputation grew, so did the need for a larger facility.
In the spring of 1997, the Kerns family moved into a new facility - their present day facility - on the west side of Edgewood. (see map) This allowed them to add more employees (they have over 40 full-time employees today and 50 more seasonal or part-time employees) and to expand their offerings. In 2013, the Kerns family purchased an event center in downtown Edgewood for weddings and other special events. (They have since divested themselves of that facility.) And in 2014, Terry Kerns daughter, Katie Anderson, bought a share of the Edgewood Locker making it a three-generational business. In 2015, Jim's daughter, Baili Maurer, bought into the business, and in 2017 her brother, Payson Kerns, joined the business as a partner. After the death of patriarch Tom Kerns in 2018, Terry Kerns' son, Luke, bought into the business.
The Edgewood Locker is probably most famous around the state of Iowa for winning hundreds of awards primarily from the Iowa Meat Processors Association in conjunction with the Iowa State Fair for their specialty meats such as their smoke cured bacon and ham, dried beef, smoked turkey and pork chops, bratwurst, and meat and cheese snack sticks. Since 1985, the Edgewood Locker has won over 200 awards and is annually recognized for their achievements by both professional and private associations.
My step-son found out that we were going to go over to the Edgewood Locker from the funeral and he decided he would follow us over to take a look around. We got there about 1:30 in the afternoon and there were a surprising number of people parked in the lot and shopping around in the store. The numerous awards the Edgewood Locker has won over the years are proudly displayed on the knotty pine walls behind the main counter and over the refrigeration and freezer units that hold the fresh and frozen meats the locker sells.
I had brought a cooler along with us so we could cold pack the meat for the 2.5 hour drive back to the Quad Cities. And I wanted some of their bratwurst. My wife had been up to visit her mother earlier this spring and she stopped into the Edgewood Locker and picked up a couple packages of their sweet onion brats, as well as their "very garlic" bratwurst. I hadn't had Edgewood brats for quite sometime and I forgot how great they were when I cooked them up on the grill a week or so after she brought them home.
I made a beeline to the refrigerated case that held the nearly 3 dozen different flavors of brats the Edgewood Locker has available. I immediately found some of the sweet onion brats and the garlic brats and threw them in the basket. Something else caught my eye - the craft beer and cheese bratwurst. I grabbed a couple four packs of those, as well.
I didn't want to go overboard with the brats, but the jalapeño and cheddar bratwurst was tough to pass up, as were the whiskey and peppercorn brats. I thought twice about getting a pack or two of the horseradish and cheddar brats, as well as the mushroom and Swiss cheese bratwurst. But I had six packages of brats already and thought that would be enough for now.
While we were there, I saw a sign that showed a number of retail outlets from Central Iowa to Eastern Iowa that sold Edgewood Locker meats. My step-son lives in a small town near Tipton, north and west of the Quad Cities and he said, "Oh, yeah! The Family Foods store in Tipton has all different kinds of Edgewood brats and meats." We saw that a couple places in towns close to the Quad Cities had some Edgewood Locker meat and we figured we'd check those place out at some point.
They had a "seconds" or a close-out section at Edgewood Locker and I found a pack of cheese hot dogs that I picked up. I like hot dogs at home from time to time and I've had some of the hot dogs over the past few weeks. They have a great snap to the casing, but the cheese usually cooks out and the hot dogs are very salty. Maybe that's why they were "seconds".
I knew their smoked pork chops were very good - the Edgewood Locker has won numerous awards for their smoke pork chops over the years. I picked up two of the 2-packs hoping to have them sometime soon. My wife isn't too whippy on smoked pork chops as most of the ones we've had in the past have been too salty. However, I seem to remember the smoked pork chops from Edgewood Locker not being all that salty.
As I was getting ready to check out, I went back to the fresh meat case and found a couple packages of rib-eye steaks. Thinking that those would be good to have with dinner that night, I picked two packs up thinking there was just one in each pack. But when I got home that night and cut open the first of the two packs, I found that there were two thin-cut, breakfast-style rib-eyes inside. They were probably better for sandwiches, but I went ahead and cooked the two on the grill for my wife and I that night. And they were delicious.
We passed up getting some of their great bacon - we had a bunch of bacon in the freezer back home that we needed to worry about before getting more bacon. But they have about 10 different styles and flavors of bacon to choose from at the Edgewood Locker.
And any type of pork or beef cut that you could imagine are available at the Edgewood Locker. As I was checking out our basket of meat, my step-son inquired about getting a brisket to smoke at his house. They had a 15 pound full brisket - flat and point cut combined - for $5.59 a pound. I told him that the proper way to smoke a brisket is about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes per pound at about 230 to 240 degrees (F). I even said that I'd go in on one with him if he wanted to split it out. They lady behind the counter said that they could separate the flat and point cuts in back. But the more my step-son thought of it, he finally declined. "Sometime," he said. "But I'm not ready to commit to that amount of time on a cut of meat like that."
We got out of the Edgewood Locker spending just under $80 bucks on brats, hot dogs, pork chops, ground beef and rib-eye steaks. And my wife didn't even pick out any of the beef or cheese sticks the Edgewood Locker is famous for! I had brought a 33-quart cooler with us and it was packed nearly full once all the meat packs were transferred into it. And we still needed to put some ice in it to keep the meat cool during the drive home. As I said earlier, I don't want to say that I had an ulterior motive to going to the funeral in Strawberry Point, but let's just say that the stop at the Edgewood Locker made the day much more palatable - in more ways than one...