ELY, Iowa (KCRG) – Dan & Debbie’s Creamery is the place to go in Ely for a scoop of fresh, homemade ice cream.
Employees at Edgewood Locker box orders on May 5, 2020. (Mary Green/KCRG)
But recently, one of the store’s hot sellers has been the brats and meats from Edgewood Locker, which it started carrying in March.
“We’ve seen a high demand for their products. We’re constantly restocking our shelves every week with them, and we have a consistent customer base,” Bridgette Banda, Dan & Debbie’s retail store manager and product development manager, said.
At the Clayton County meat locker itself, it’s even busier.
“It has been a zoo,” owner Terry Kerns said. “We’re used to busy. That’s what we thrive on, but it has been a whole other level the last few weeks.”
It got even busier on Tuesday, when Hy-Vee announced it would be limiting customers’ meat purchases, including chicken, beef and pork, to four packs per visit, starting Wednesday.
After that announcement, Kerns said the calls to Edgewood Locker didn’t stop, with people placing more orders and asking if they planned to enact their own limits on purchases, which they don’t, for now.
“It’s like a Christmas tree, the phone is, and I’m even colorblind,” Kerns said.
While Edgewood Locker’s main focus is on specialty items that customers can’t find everywhere, like mac & cheese brats and honey pork & pineapple snack sticks, Kerns said they’re selling a lot more staples too, some of which is starting to run out.
“We haven’t sold this many beef roasts and pork roasts in a long time,” he said. “I think people, when it comes to this type of mentality, weren’t out after snack sticks and bratwursts, as much as they just wanted to get some of the basics — burgers and roasts — into the freezer.”
As demand goes up, the prices follow. In addition to processing meat from local farmers, Edgewood Locker buys some of its meat from packing plants, where production has either dropped or stopped completely because of coronavirus outbreaks among workers. That scarcity has led to higher costs, for both the locker and, in turn, its customers.
“It becomes a real balancing act, trying to keep up with the prices, and you don’t want to end up with a whole mess of stuff that people won’t buy, and I thought I was there two weeks ago, and it’s way higher than it was then, so I’m not sure where it ends,” Kerns said.
Those price increases then travel on to the 50 or so stores that sell Edgewood Locker products, like Dan & Debbie’s, where the busy summer season is just getting started — even during a pandemic.
“The brats are the number one seller for us, definitely,” Banda said. “It’s time to get your grills out and get those going.”
Kerns said he doesn’t know to what extent their prices will keep increasing, or if they’ll run out of any more products. But, he added, too much business isn’t the worst problem to have.
“Yes, we’re dealing with a lot of issues, but our issues are because we’re too busy,” Kerns said. “And so we’re pretty dang fortunate in the whole scheme of this whole thing that trying to keep up with demand is our problem.”
