Meyer's Elgin Smokehouse

Meyer's is two businesses about a quarter of a mile apart in Elgin, founded half a century apart. The sausage company came first. R. G. Meyer started Meyer's Sausage Company in 1949, working from a recipe his father Henry, a German immigrant, had taught him around 1915. By the family's account they had bought the Rock Front Store at Main and Loop 109 in 1943 and were already making sausage in a smokehouse behind the grocery, on a dirt floor. That detail is recent: their own history page as it stood in 2002 has none of it. The processing plant on South Main Street went up in 1964 and is still the plant. The barbecue restaurant on US-290 is far newer. Gregg, Denise, Gary and Becky Meyer bought Bigger's BBQ in February 1998 and reopened it under the family name, which is how a house that dates its sausage to 1949 has only been selling barbecue by the pound since the end of the century. R. G. died in 1959 and his son Buddy ran the company from then until his own death in 1989, at fifty six; Buddy's sons are the fourth generation by the family's count, which reckons from Henry and the recipe rather than from the company. Federal inspection came in 2002 and with it the right to ship across state lines. Elgin is about twelve thousand people now and supports two sausage makers of national reputation, this one and the market that took its name from the south side of the railroad tracks.