At the weekly morning meeting on Aug. 20, the Wautoma Kiwanis Club welcomed Duane Detjens owner of StoneRidge and Parker Detjens General Manager of Wholesale Department for StoneRidge as the guest speakers.
Duane gave a little history of the store telling them that in 2003 the original location is where Ace Hardware is currently but a fire in 2004 destroyed the building. They moved and rebuilt to their current location in 2005 and since have added on to the current size they are now.
They also own stores in De Pere, Little Chute, Kaukauna and soon a store in Winneconne plus the packaging plant in Coloma. Between all locations they have over 600 employees.
StoneRidge expertise is fresh meat, cheese and sausage. Duane also explained that they can still process your venison meat into sausage or hot sticks provided you bring it in deboned. They no longer cut up deer.
StoneRidge is currently renting with the option to purchase the old Shopko building and are using it for storage. Parker spoke about the Wholesale side of StoneRidge and in Wautoma they employ over 65 people and in Coloma 40 employee’s. They just got in their second high tech packing unit in Wautoma that was made in Germany.
Hot sticks and sausage take 12 to 15 hours in the smoker and you will soon be seeing new packaging for their hot sticks with all the info printed on the packing rather than the insert. All cheese products they package is done in the Coloma plant. They receive the cheese in bulk from ten different cheese specialists and cut it down to size.
StoneRidge is also a Wautoma Kiwanis Corporate Member.
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Parker Detjens (left) and Duane Detjens (right) spoke with the Wautoma Kiwanis about StoneRidge at the morning meeting.