Paradise Locker Meats has a history that dates back more than 70 years, but Paradise was almost paved over before the Fantasma family rescued it and turned it into one of the country’s premier small meat processors. Still, it wasn’t an easy process. The state of Missouri was ready to close down the facility… on Mario Fantasma’s second day of ownership. Nobody had told the county that the run-down building was under new management.
“I said, ‘Give me a couple of weeks, because I just bought it.’ We cleaned it up pretty good and got rid of all the junk,” Mario recalls. When the county officials came back a couple of weeks later, they told him to keep up the good work and left.