-Submitted photo
Tucker Maxwell is pictured with his girlfriend, Zoey Campbell. Maxwell has breathed new life into a local business, opening Maxwell Custom Beef last year in the former Amend Packing Co. building. His business has customers around Iowa and the Midwest.

MAXWELL — After 149 years of processing beef for farmers and customers in Iowa, Amend Packing Co. closed its doors in 2018. But more than a year ago, Tucker Maxwell drew upon his experience working at a meat locker and decided to breathe new life into the old Amend building and opened his own custom processing business.

Five generations of the Amend family worked at their business. Most of the meat was processed by hand in the company’s cold warehouse. Cattle would arrive whole with instructions on how customers wanted them cut.

A seventh-generation farmer with his family, Maxwell bought his first three calves from a neighboring farm. He showed two heifers and one steer at the Story County Fair, entering his steer in a carcass class. That was his first glimpse into the butchering side of the cattle industry.

Maxwell’s great uncle founded Golly’s Locker in Maxwell, Iowa, and he worked there as a teenager for the Adams family who owned it at the time.

“It paid for gas and paved the road for me to go to college,” Maxwell said.

He attended the University of South Dakota, but then the sunny state of Florida beckoned to Maxwell. He lived there for six years or so, selling roofing and siding and bartending on the side. But after his dad wrecked a snowmobile, Maxwell returned home to help out on the family farm, also located in Maxwell, which is operated by his dad and uncle.

As a young adult, Maxwell said he became more conscious of what he was eating. He realized there was a need for quality, locally sourced beef and for people to have a connection with those who grow their food.

“My dad mentioned that the Amend plant was for sale. I took a chance on an idea I had to open my own custom processing business and it blossomed into Maxwell Custom Beef,” Maxwell said. “I’ve had a lot of really good mentors in this space. I picked the brains of the previous owner of Amend to see what they would’ve done differently. The packing plant was their whole life and they worked really hard. They knew every farmer down here.”

Maxwell Custom Beef isn’t just his business but his passion, and Maxwell said, “It’s been really fun.”

“We’ve more than doubled what was being done here previously. We work with more than 100 producers, which presents a good challenge. The building is 100 years old and we’ve had freezer and cooler problems, but overall, this has been awesome. We’re really lucky to be able to meet the producers and customers we work with,” Maxwell said. “It’s been fun trying to automate a lot of the process and bring technology into a building where there is none.”

Most customers are excited to support a local processor, too, Maxwell said. A majority of the cattle producers he works with were customers of Amend Packing, but also farmers from across Iowa and into Illinois, Missouri and South Dakota.

“They’re driving from everywhere. I treat them fairly and keep open lines of communication with them,” Maxwell said. “Direct to customer also is one of the best parts of my job as I get to meet the end user. Whether it’s families and the kids getting our custom cuts for the first time, or people trying us for the first time, I encourage them to come up and talk to me. I’ll walk them through everything in the box and will explain if they have questions. I want them to be the happiest they can be with the product they’re filling their freezer with.”

The custom process path goes from farm to freezer, then freezer to table. There are less moving parts and a more direct line to the consumer, Maxwell said. He also sets his products apart from others by dry aging the meat in a cooler for 17 to 21 days, which is longer than what others do.

“People aren’t wanting highly processed food, so we keep it as basic as possible. A customer can get everything cut exactly how they want it. Rather than bone-in or boneless chuck roast, we can offer bone-in ribeyes, which are awesome. Other people get bone-in sirloin, which you can’t find in a lot of places,” Maxwell said. “We offer something I think is pretty unique. If it can be cut out of a carcass, we can do it. That’s the beauty of custom exempt cutting. However you want it, we will do it.”

Maxwell Custom Beef also processes deer and lamb. Maxwell said he also doesn’t believe in charging emergency slaughter fees.

“If a calf is sick or has broken its leg, we don’t charge for that,” he said. “I try to keep everything as basic as possible.”

Someone who hasn’t tried custom beef should give it a try, Maxwell said, not just because he’d love the opportunity to work with new customers, but because the simpler the better for food.

“We offer retail cuts in addition to custom beef cuts,” Maxwell said. “When our customers travel to us and tell us they feel lucky to have a freezer full of beef, that’s the driving factor as to why we do what we do.”