When the meat market opened in 1927, there were no refrigerators, so the butchers had to dress the meat no more than 24 hours prior to its sale. But today, while the meat is still trimmed by hand, Fischer's operates with state of the art equipment. The meat market, which is both state and federally inspected, has evolved to a complete grocery store, heavily influenced by the German culture. They provide every thing from their custom German meats to custom smoked, wire cut cheeses, German desserts and beers.
The family owned and operated business has spanned three generations, thus far. Stanley Hess, who married into the family, is now a part owner of the market and works alongside one of the Fischer son's, Steve, in the store seven days a week.
"It has been in the same family since 1927, it has been in the Fischer family," Hess said. "It is a very good thriving business. We deliver all over the metroplex and we ship over the internet. Most of our business comes from out of town. A lot of our business comes from Oklahoma, Dallas, Fort Worth, Denton, Plano (and so on)."
To insure only the highest quality cuts get to their meat counter, the Fischer family operates Fischer Farms. There, they feed out a mixture of both Black Angus and Charloais cattle, which they have hand-picked from area farms.
"Now we've got a feedlot that probably has roughly 150 head in it," Hess said. "We normally buy from the same farms over and over, the majority of our cattle come from the Nocona area, and I condition some at my own house that come here."
Fischer Farm strives to feed their cattle out for a maximum of 90 days before they are processed. Cattle are fed a mix of grains that have been customized by Hess and Steve, which they purchase from both the major feed suppliers in Muenster.
"The thing about a Black Angus is, by the time we get them, when you feed them out for 90 days, at 90 days, with the diet that we got them on, they'll be perfect," Hess said. "But if you go over that, say two weeks, they'll be too fat."
With several pens of cattle on the feedlot, they are continually moving cattle in and out, processing approximately 20 of their own beef cattle each week.
"We are at a point now, with our feedlot, if we got any bigger, we would have to hire more help and it would be harder to keep the personal touch to it," Hess said.
In addition to their beef products, Fischer's makes approximately 60 varieties of sausage, along with many other specialty meats, including custom-cut meats.
"We make sausage like the German sausage that goes in the counter," Hess said. "It goes from the smoke house, to the chill cooler, to the counter, it never goes anywhere else.
"People always go, 'I want the freshest you have,'" Hess explained. "Well, the freshest we have is normally never more than 48 hours old, at the most, from the time it was made till the time it gets to the counter.
"One of the things that I like, if someone comes in and wants an unusual steak or roast, we can cut it while they wait," he added. "So, we pretty much have a butcher on site to take care of all that."
Many of Fischer's products in its grocery store are imported from Germany. Fischer's also has a lot of their own recipes bottled, in addition to mixing their own seasoning in their spice room and custom smoking a variety of cheeses.
Fischer's is a state and federal processing plant, therefore in order for livestock to be processed in their facility, it must be healthy and able to walk into the plant on its own.
"We actually start with live animals. Basically they walk in and we carry them out in boxes. You can bring us an animal and we will process it to your needs or you can pick one out of our feed lot, or you can go back there and buy you a steak."
There is a state inspector employed by the State of Texas, and a federal inspector as well, stationed at the plant. The plant processes meat Monday through Friday and performs maintenance on the weekends while the inspector is off.
"We do not pay him, he just works here, this is his job location," Hess said. "He is like a police officer basically. He works here, but he does not work for us, he works for the state. He has an office in our building that he actually has the only key to."
Every step is taken to insure that customers who bring livestock to be processed at the plant get their animal back.
"When they come in, we put two tags on the beef," Hess said. "We will write down what breed of cow it is. Most of the time, considering we are running pretty much at any given time on a kill day, at the most, we will have 15 beef in the building.
"We try to set them up an appointment time. Be here at 10, be here at 11, be here at 12, so we are not sitting here with all these cows that are wanting to all eat and drink at the same time. 'Cause you have to keep them food and water all the time up until they are killed. So we try to schedule them where they are not all here at one time. We schedule them throughout the day up until noon. We should be able to wind it up by two o'clock or so, and then get on pigs and then, before five, we should be able to wipe out everything here."
Once a customer has dropped off their stock, they fill out a cutting card that specifies how they want their meat processed.
"You'll get a cutting card that you will fill out when you are here of what you want," Hess explained. "So, we will fill out how many roasts you want, how much hamburger, you know. Usually, your hamburger is the hardest to determine because it is usually your end factor of your trimmings. If you want hamburger patties or any of that, then when your beef comes out, they will say, 'this one belongs to Don Ace,' so they pull his cutting card."
On the day of the animals' scheduled slaughter, the State Inspector is responsible for following each individual animal through the plant. Once the plant has tagged the animal the inspector reviews the tagging and approves the animal to be processed.
"They actually kill it right in front of him -- he has to be there," Hess said. "They kill the animal, they process it, it goes up on the rail, he looks at it and he (the inspector) says, 'that's safe to eat,' he stamps it. Once he stamps it, then we put a tag on the carcass itself. It's just a food grade ink, basically it is made out of rice paper. It just states your name and number and all that. He double checks all that. It will hang for two weeks."
At the end of those two weeks, the animal is still marked by the carcass tag with the customer's information and order number. The animal is now ready to be processed.
"The cutting cards are done in order, because they (the butchers) know when they walk in the door in the morning, they know how many beef they are going to processed and in what order they are going to be," Hess said.
Fischer's can customize meat processing for their customers. The meat market will even go as far as to allow the customer to bring in their own recipes and customize the meat accordingly.
To find out more about Fischer's Meat Market and processing plant, visit www.fischersmeatmarket.com .
