Our Story
Mr. Meatz did not start as a business plan. It started with somebody who could not stay away from a meat counter.
Meet Tony
Tony Ruby is a Prairie Heights graduate who started working around meat as a teenager and fell for it immediately.
It is not a glamorous trade. It is early mornings, cold rooms, sharp equipment and a lot of standing up. But there is a particular satisfaction in breaking down a whole animal properly, and in handing somebody exactly the cut they asked for, at exactly the thickness they wanted, while they wait.
Tony spent years learning the butcher shop and deli side of the business from the inside — how to buy, how to cut, how to keep a case honest, and how to talk to somebody who has no idea what they want for dinner. By the time he opened his own doors in 2021, he had a clear idea of the shop he wanted to run.
Mostly it came down to this: sell the meat you would take home to your own family, and treat everybody who walks in like they will be back next week. Because in a town the size of Angola, they will be.
What Happened Next
Mr. Meatz opened small. One person, a counter, and a lot of hours.
What grew it was not advertising. It was brats. Tony kept inventing flavors — then more flavors, then flavors that had no business working and somehow did. Bacon Mac n Cheese. Gummy Worm. Peanut Butter & Grape Jelly. People started driving in from out of town just to see what was on the board that week, and telling their friends about it.
The brat board is past ninety flavors now, and Angola picked up a nickname along the way: the Brat Capital of Northeast Indiana. The smokehouse went in. Then wild game processing, which turned deer season into the busiest stretch of the year. Then catering, because people kept asking whether Tony could just do the whole graduation party.
The shop outgrew its first building and moved into a bigger one on West Maumee Street — a former greenhouse, of all things, now full of coolers and cutting tables. It also grew enough to open a second store up in Huntertown. Same counter, same board, same rules.
None of that changed how the place runs. There are more hands now, and more equipment, but it is still a shop where somebody knows your name and asks how thick you want it.
A Cut Above.
On the back of every shirt in the building
What We Stand On
Every shop says it cares about quality. These are the specific, checkable things we actually do about it.
All grinds are made from USDA Choice whole muscle meat only — never trimmings, never scraps swept together at the end of a shift. It costs more and it is not negotiable. The same standard applies to what goes into the brats and the smokehouse.
Good meat gets ruined by bad equipment. Sharp saws, proper grinders, a real smokehouse and cold rooms that hold temperature. When something is worn out we replace it, because the customer is the one who tastes the difference.
Nobody gets rushed at this counter. Ask what to do with a cut you have never cooked and you will get a real answer. Bring in a deer and it gets processed on its own, not blended into somebody else's order.
Inside the Shop
These are placeholders. Real photos of the shop, the case, the smokehouse and the crew drop straight in here — no layout changes needed.
The Neighbors
Mr. Meatz has never run a television commercial. What it has is more than 7,400 people following the shop on Facebook, checking for the weekly specials and arguing in the comments about which brat flavor is best.
That following was not bought. It came from graduation parties that went well, from hunters who got their own deer back, from somebody's mother being told exactly how to cook a cut she had never bought before.
If you have not been in yet, that is the fastest way to understand the place. Come stand at the counter on a Saturday morning and listen to how people talk to the staff.
Stop In
Bring a question about a cut you have never cooked. That is genuinely Tony's favorite kind of customer.
