Carving out a niche, for 85 years

In the age of automation, not many food manufacturers and distributors hand cut their own meat.

But one still does.

The family-owned and operated R&R Provision Co. in Easton is counting on that more personalized service to help fuel its longevity.

The privately owned company celebrated its 85^th anniversary this year and continues to serve restaurants, country clubs, culinary arts schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other organizations with wholesale products that include specialties such as corned beef brisket, ribeye, tenderloins and boneless Delmonico steaks.

“We’re not just a food distributor, we’re also a manufacturer and we make a lot of products in-house,” said R&R Provision President Richard “Rick” Rogers II. “We also do custom cuts of steaks – beef, pork, lamb and veal – that’s really our forte. Our niche is our manufactured products.”

R&R started as a specialty food supplier, founded by two men named Ralph and Russ who lent their names to the company. In 1980, Rocky Rogers bought out some of the original owners and in 1991, his son Rick joined the company, turning R&R into a family business where Rocky still serves as company chairman.

Today, the company occupies space on Northampton Street in a nearly 40,000-square-foot warehouse and manufacturing facility with an adjacent retail shop that sells the company’s products.

The store offers customers the chance to buy grocery items such as ready-made lunches, veal patties, holiday and party platters, sausage, and scrapple, a regional version of meatloaf popularized by the Pennsylvania Dutch.

The company has been in the same spot at 1242 Northampton St. since the beginning opened its current warehouse/manufacturing plant in 2009. Today, the company employs slightly more than 30 people and has eight trucks.
With 1,500 customers, the company ships within a 250-mile radius of Easton, with truck deliveries Monday through Friday, Rogers said.

What makes the business a rare find in the valley is the fact that it uses employees to handle the butchering process, rather than machines.

“We process fresh ground beef every morning,” Rogers said. “The USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] is on the premises every day when we do processing. We’ve been around the meat business a long time.”

Many of the company’s employees have been at the company for a long time, too, with minimal turnover.

“It shows that we have a craft,” Rogers said. “It’s a dying art, butchering. A lot of the big guys will put them in machines. I think the hand cut is a nice touch.”

Finding skilled people who can do butchering, a physically grinding and messy job, is a challenge, Rogers said. And he believes it’s an issue throughout the food service industry

Having worked full time for the company for 28 years, Rogers, who lives in Allentown, said it’s rewarding to see everyone grow and change over that time.

The company still makes some of the original 1934 recipes for its products.

R&R has been in business since 1934, but it is always looking to make new products, including offering marinated steaks and grass-fed beef.

In addition to serving just about every diner in the valley with its products, R&R also sells to many local restaurants. These include notable Lehigh Valley names such as Aladdin, Youell’s Oyster House, Adobo Latin Kitchen, Jimmy’s Hot Dogs and Yocco’s.

“Our challenge has been trying to fill the requests of people that moved from the Lehigh Valley area that grew up on [our] manufactured products.”

The company has not ventured into selling online in any significant way and has only a minimal presence on the web. However, the company has recognized that it needs to expand its reach on the web and think about selling nationwide.

“We are definitely planning on expanding,” Rogers said. “We are trying to branch out into some new territories. We have a lot of new ideas.”