Backroad Meats expands to the highway

The meat processing business opens new store on Highway 169

Every summer, many Minnesotans travel north on Highway 169 through Milaca on their way to their cabins, camping, and the lake where they spend their weekends.

This summer, they will have a new pit-stop along the way where they can stop to grab meat products to enjoy on their weekend getaways.

Backroad Meats of Milaca has been part of the community since 2019 as a meat processing and butchering company. Now, it can add retail to its roster of offerings after the soft opening of its new store at 19110 Highway 169 in Milaca near Prince Bait and Marine.

Owners Rob and Amanda Isaacson have been planning to open the retail store for almost two years, but it took them some time to get all the required permits and finalize their plans.

In January, their plans began to come to life as the frame of the store was constructed.

“We hired someone to frame it, and they started framing it in January. We had some friends finish the inside of it. We just plugged through it,” Rob Isaacson said. “We stood the first wall up in February and kept cruising through it.”

Fast forward to May and the store was ready to open. The Isaacsons held a soft opening for the store on Thursday, May 9, with the coolers full of their processed burgers, pork chops, chicken, bratwurst, bacon and more.

The Isaacsons decided to open the retail store after restrictions prevented them from selling their products out of their processing facility.

“We couldn’t do retail. We had a couple of different options to sell out of other people’s stores, and they kind of fell through,” Rob Isaacson said. “Then the opportunity came up to get this piece of land, and this is where we wanted to be. It worked out nice. We’ve got the perfect mix of the fishing, the burger place, the gun shop and gas station (as neighbors).”

All of the products currently available at Backroad Meats are processed at their facility in Milaca three miles south of the retail store at 16849 110th Ave.

The couple has big plans for the retail store as it continues to grow, including adding a wider variety of meat products and potentially a small sandwich shop where they can sell a limited menu of sandwiches a couple of days per week.

“We’re going get some bison and eventually some elk in here as something different. Maybe some seafood, cheese, sauces and seasonings. We want to make it a one-stop barbecue store,” Rob Isaacson said. “We’d like to get a sandwich shop here at some point. Not a restaurant, but something like we will do a brisket sandwich tonight and that’s what we have. That’s the main idea for the kitchen. We want to make our own potato salads and things like that in the kitchen, too.”

The Isaacsons are excited to finally be able to have their retail space open for business after the years of planning to make it happen. But there are still some kinks for them to work out before their grand opening in the coming weeks.

“It’s fantastic. We’ve been working on this for probably a year and a half to two years,” Rob Isaacson said. “It’s a learning curve. Everyone’s been pretty patient.”

“There are a lot of bugs to work out, but we’ll get there,” Amanda Isaacson said.

According to the Isaacsons, they would not have been able to get the store up and running without the help of their family, friends and the contractors and local businesses that helped them along the way.

“We have awesome neighbors, and this is an awesome community,” Amanda Isaacson said.

Rob Isaacson currently works full-time at the processing facility, and Amanda Isaacson hopes to work full-time at the retail store in the near future.

“I think this will be my full-time job, that’s kind of what we’re going for. Then Rob will be down at the shop (processing),” Amanda Isaacson said.

Amanda currently works as a nuclear medical technician.

Backroad Meats’ retail store is open noon to 4 p.m. Sundays; 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays; 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays. The store is closed on Mondays.

To learn more about Backroad Meats, visit the website at www.backroadmeats.com.