Today, Western’s Smokehouse of Greentop, Mo. is known as a premier manufacturer of meat snack sticks. With a growing branded presence and a long list of private label customers, the company’s meat sticks can be found across the country. Naturally, the company has a great deal of expertise on the subject, but it wasn’t always that way. In fact, Kevin Western jokes that when he first got involved with the product, he thought shelf-stable snack sticks were made just by adding something to the meat.
“I called up a seasoning company and said, ‘What ingredient do you add to make a shelf-stable meat snack?’ and they said, ‘Well, there’s not,’” he recalls, laughing.