October Business Spotlight

The Wabasso EDA and Redwood Area Development Corporation have paired together to highlight some of the businesses in Wabasso in the upcoming months. Our first highlight is focusing on Ruprecht’s Meat Market. Chad Ruprecht, age 49 of Wabasso, is used to be being busy as the owner of Ruprecht’s Meat Market. With summer nearing the end and hunting season just around the corner, he is already gearing up for an even busier fall filled with seasonal custom processing and retail sales, including a few other surprising plans.

For Ruprecht, butchering and processing started out as a hobby in his hometown of Wanda, Minnesota. Growing up, he always enjoyed going hunting with his father and grandpa which included processing deer.  Later on in life, Chad began to help out his friends and locals with processing and packing meat. He quickly agreed with his friends that it would be a great idea to build a small deer processing shop in his hometown to keep up with the demand. Once Chad realized this was a true passion of his, he moved to Wabasso and bought the existing meat locker on Main Street in May of 2018 and named it Ruprecht’s Meat Market.

The building on Main Street was originally built as a movie theatre back in the day and over the years evolved into a meat locker with multiple different ownerships. Before Chad reopened the locker, he worked tirelessly on preparing the store to be ready for his opening by cleaning, painting, and remodeling the front retail side of the operation. He also installed a new cooler, freezer, and smokehouse in the back where they perform a variety of jobs such as custom processing and also prepping retail for the in-house sales as well as his widely popular mobile meat truck.

Chad offers a variety of services and items for retail such as flavored brats, breakfast sausage, summer sausage, steaks, pork chops, bacon, marinated chicken, beef sticks, jerky, and so much more. When asked what the most popular item in the store is, Chad quickly replied,  “Definitely our ‘Wabasso Rings’ and our thick sliced bacon”. Ruprecht’s Meat Market is also known for their homemade delicious flavored brats. If you stop in at the store you can find flavors like Mushroom and Swiss, Bacon Cheeseburger, Honey Mustard, Rueben, and Jalapeño Cheddar!

I asked Chad what the future looked like for him and his current business, he grinned ear to ear and replied, “If you haven’t heard already, I’m buying the bar next door and I’m planning on expanding my business into the back of that building. It’s something I’m really excited to get started working on and have been looking forward to it for a while.” Some of the things on Chad’s to do list include breaking into the old bowling alley section of the bar and adding a room for making sausage, adding a commercial grade smokehouse, a new cooler, and a new freezer.

His new business is right next door and was known formerly as ‘Union Kitchen Sports Bar & Grill’, but it will be renamed ‘Babble On’ under Ruprecht’s ownership. He is especially looking forward to serving fresh cut meats for specials from his business next door in the new bar. Ruprecht stated that he plans to renovate the bar slowly but surely across time while hopefully being able to remain open. The bar will be open as soon as the beginning of October and the current plan is to start out with pizzas and drinks until he can get the kitchen up and running with full time employees. “I’m really excited to just have a place to go to and unwind after a long day of work,” said Ruprecht. Currently Ruprecht’s Meat Market has 8 employees and is in the process of gathering employees to work at Babble On. When asked for advice for anyone wanting to start their own business in a small town he responded, “Make sure there’s a need for it in the community, do your homework, and just GO for it!”.

You can find Ruprecht at the meat market Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. His meat truck travels to the Springfield Farmer’s Market on Tuesday’s, Willmar Kandi Mall on Wednesday’s, New Ulm Farmer’s Market on Thursday’s, and Key Largo on Saturday’s. Business hours for Babble On are to be determined. He encourages people to come visit both locations in the future, and is excited to serve the community of Wabasso in this next chapter of his life.