A 35-year institution changes hands. The new owners were already customers.
Almena Meat Company was founded in November 1988 by Brad and Kay Rundhaug in the small northwest Wisconsin community of Almena. For 35 years, it earned the trust of local families, farmers, and hunters with expert butchering, custom livestock processing, and handcrafted sausage made with time-honored recipes. The Rundhaug name became synonymous with quality and personal service in a region where that relationship between producer and butcher matters deeply.
The acquisition made agricultural sense before it made business sense. Jeff and Charlotte had been bringing their Angus cattle to Almena Meat for years. They knew the staff, the facility, the quality standards. When the opportunity to purchase came through in early 2024, it represented the final link in a chain they had been building since 2012: raising the cattle, feeding the cattle, processing the cattle, selling the beef. Total vertical integration. The Antczak Angus experience “full circle.”
Charlotte Antczak had framed the vision for what farm-to-table integrity looks like in practice: “I feel like COVID was honestly the best thing to happen for us as beef producers and small business owners, because people became way more aware of what they were eating.” That awareness — and the demand it created for known, trusted, locally processed beef — was the market backdrop for the Almena acquisition.
“We knew this facility and we knew this team. We weren’t buying a stranger’s business. We were taking over a place we’d trusted with our own animals. The obligation was to make it better without making it unrecognizable.”
— Jeff Antczak, Co-owner, Almena Meat Company / Ranch Brand Meat Company
A blank slate and a 35-year name. Build digital in from the start — the right way.
Most eCommerce deployments begin with an operator who has been running manually for years and has to migrate a history of processes onto a new system. Almena was a different kind of challenge and a different kind of opportunity. The new owners acquired a business with an excellent reputation, deep community trust, and essentially no digital sales infrastructure. Everything was walk-in, phone-in, or long-standing relationship.
- All existing staff retained on day one
- Time-honored sausage recipes and processing methods
- Community relationships built over 35 years
- USDA federal inspection certification
- Custom processing service for local farmers and hunters
- Facility upgrades and enhanced food safety standards
- New carcass cooler (announced for installation)
- Digital retail and ordering infrastructure
- Online beef share pre-order with deposit collection
- Wild game processing booking portal
The new ownership’s advantage was that they weren’t changing a culture — they were adding infrastructure to an already-trusted one. The staff who had worked under the Rundhaug-Bohn family remained. The sausage recipes stayed. The processing methods that had earned Almena its reputation were untouched. What changed was the customer-facing channel and the operational efficiency underneath it.
Digital from the first week: retail, beef shares, wild game bookings, and a transition story told right.
The brief was one of the clearest we had worked with: build an eCommerce operation that extends Almena’s existing product quality and community trust into a digital channel, without changing anything that the community had valued about the store for 35 years. The challenge was in the communication as much as the commerce.
- Full retail catalog online with beef, pork, lamb, goat, and sausage. Almena’s complete product line — sirloin, porterhouse, T-bone, ribeye, chuck roast, ground beef, specialty sausage — listed with USDA inspection badge, exact weight ranges, and the Almena farm-to-plate positioning story. Local buyers who had always driven in discovered they could order ahead. New buyers in neighboring counties found Almena for the first time.
- Beef share packages (1/8, 1/4, 1/2) with deposit and weight-based final billing. The 1/8 share (11 lbs steak, 15 lbs roast, 35 lbs ground beef), 1/4 share, and 1/2 share are listed with exact contents. Buyers pay a deposit at checkout. Final charge is calculated from actual processed weight. The weight-based billing that defines the beef share business is native to the checkout — not an awkward workaround.
- Beef share packages (1/8, 1/4, 1/2) with deposit and weight-based final billing. The 1/8 share (11 lbs steak, 15 lbs roast, 35 lbs ground beef), 1/4 share, and 1/2 share are listed with exact contents. Buyers pay a deposit at checkout. Final charge is calculated from actual processed weight. The weight-based billing that defines the beef share business is native to the checkout — not an awkward workaround.
- Transition communication built into the first digital touchpoint. The new ownership story — who Jeff, Charlotte, and Jake are, their agricultural roots, why they bought Almena, what they are keeping and what they are improving — was embedded in the website from launch day. Existing customers received an email from the new ownership team the day the portal went live. The communication and the commerce launched simultaneously.
- Wholesale B2B portal for restaurant and institutional buyers. Almena supplies restaurants and food service buyers in northwest Wisconsin. A dedicated B2B portal with custom pricing per account and net-30 invoicing gives those buyers a digital ordering channel separate from the retail store, with pricing appropriate to their relationship.
- QuickBooks Online integration for AR and reconciliation. Orders generate invoices automatically. B2B accounts settle on net terms with AR visibility per account. Beef share deposits reconcile against final weight-adjusted charges. Monthly reconciliation that previously required manual entry became automatic.
61% digital in year one. Wild game season fully booked online. Community trust held through the transition.
The wild game portal result was the one that exceeded projections most clearly. In previous years, hunters booked processing by phone, often in a rush in the days before the season opened. The portal allowed hunters to book in advance, submit their cut preferences weeks ahead of drop-off, and receive a confirmation without a call. By the first day of the 2025 deer season, every available processing slot was booked. The production schedule — which had always been reactive — became plannable for the first time.
“We wanted people to know that Almena wasn’t gone — it was in good hands. The team stayed. The recipes stayed. What changed was you could now order online, book your game processing ahead of time, and get a text when your order is ready. People responded really well. The community understands that being better isn’t the same as being different.”
— Charlotte Antczak, Co-owner, Almena Meat Company / Ranch Brand Meat Company
The communication approach — launching the ownership story and the digital channel simultaneously on day seven — produced measurably higher engagement from existing customers than a delayed rollout would have. Customers who received the email from the new ownership team on launch day converted to online ordering at a significantly higher rate than new visitors who found the site cold. Trust was the conversion mechanism. The digital channel provided the destination for it.
The beef share weight-based billing integration eliminated a recurring reconciliation problem. Previously, the difference between estimated and actual processed weight required a manual invoice adjustment and a follow-up conversation with the buyer. With the weight-based billing built into the checkout and QuickBooks-connected, the adjustment is calculated and invoiced automatically. The follow-up call is now optional — reserved for customers who want to discuss it, not required for every single beef share transaction.
Almena Meat Company is a USDA federally inspected meat processing facility located in Almena, Wisconsin. Established in November 1988, the company processes beef, pork, lamb, goat, and wild game for local families, farmers, and hunters across northwest Wisconsin. Acquired in February 2024 by Jeff and Charlotte Antczak and Jake Rooney, who operate Ranch Brand Meat Company, Antczak Angus, and Rooney Farms. Operating under new ownership with all staff retained and all traditions preserved.
