Jan. 20, 2022

Renner Corner Meats is planning to expand to meet demand for its new packaged beef jerky.

While the locker along Highway 115 north of Sioux Falls has been making jerky since 1969, it created packaging and began selling it online and through other retailers across South Dakota last year.

Sales are growing so much that the business, which also serves as a gas station and convenience store, is in the process of designing a building that will be dedicated to the production and packaging of jerky.

“I remember doing it when I first started here,” said assistant manager Jon Siemonsma, who had a work-study job in the late 1980s when he was going to vocational school. “I remember doing one case of inside rounds and that lasted I’m sure the better part of the month. Now, we’re doing 16 cases a week.”

A case is 60 pounds of meat, which weighs about half as much when it’s dried into jerky. The jerky that’s packaged for retail distribution comes in quarter-pound and half-pound packages.

While other flavors such as teriyaki and peppered are available at Renner Corner Meats, the only one packaged for distribution through other retailers is original beef. That’s also going to expand once there’s room.

“We wouldn’t be able to do anything like that until we get in our own building for that. There’s just no way we can push all that product out in this little building,” Siemonsma said. “We’re not stopping custom butchering, obviously, and we’re not stopping wild game.”

Processing wild game is how then-owner Dean Sorum came up with the seasoning blend for the jerky. He was on a hunting trip in 1969 in Montana, and the rancher who was letting the hunting party use his land wanted them to harvest and process seven extra antelope so he could feed his kittens all winter.

“We went into town, a little town called Custer, and went into the store and started looking at the different seasonings and stuff. Picked this, this and this, and I’ve never changed it,” said Sorum, whose sons now own the business, which dates back to the late 1930s when it was on the other side of the highway. Renner Corner was built on its current location in the 1940s, and Sorum’s father, Mort, became a partner in it in 1950.

Renner Corner Meats is a state-inspected processor, so products can be sold only in South Dakota. It’s possible that they’ll pursue becoming federally inspected in the new building so that the jerky can be distributed in other states.

The new building will be on land to the northwest of Renner Corner Meats.

“If all the stars align, we should have the new building up by July,” Siemonsma said.