As you step through Schmidt’s Meat Market’s doorway under the “Willkommen” sign, the old-time smokehouse aroma quickens your taste buds. You walk past a wall displaying numerous awards, and your eyes feast upon the beef jerky, specialty sausages, fresh meat cuts, and other mouth-watering morsels.
“It’s the Black Angus of pork, well known for superior quality,” said Jim Compart, president of Compart Family Farms in Nicollet, referring to the custom meat his family’s hogs produce. Our Compart Duroc branded pork is served at ‘white tablecloth’ restaurants like the Radisson in Minneapolis and Caesar’s Palace and Bellagio in Las Vegas.
It looked like Chris Vorwerk was reeling from a Caribbean voodoo curse in 2000-01. She had started United Commercial Upholstery in her New Ulm garage at 409 North Broadway on a shoestring budget. During her first year in business, an ex-convict crow-barred his brawn inside to sneakily steal her expensive sewing machines and colorful upholstery fabric.
You may never meet another married couple quite like Gene and Margo Hoffmann. Except for their wedding date – “It’s in 1964, I know that much,” claims Margo – neither know the important dates that most people would have memorized along life’s path, such as the year they began Nicollet South Bike Shop, or the year they purchased their rural Nicollet home, or the years they graduated from Mankato State. Even when pressed about her husband’s age, Margo had to fidget five or six seconds. “Fifty-nine, because he just had a birthday,” she says.
