Lemke Foods to Close After 53 Years

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Lemke Foods Inc. of Rogers is closing its business, which began in February 1946.

“It was a peddling business where you take the merchandise out and sold it out of a truck,” says Lorene Lemke, who founded the business with her husband, Arnold.

Lemke Wholesale Inc., as it was called in the early days, sold eight items: a variety of lunch meats, cheese, bacon and salt pork. At the company’s peak, it sold 450 different items.

In the beginning, Lemke says, her husband would deliver merchandise to grocery stores, where it was weighed on a scale in the truck before payment was made at each stop, she says.

Later, the business began taking orders and making those deliveries. At that time Lemke Foods picked up industrial clients like restaurants, schools and nursing homes.

Quality Foods Inc. of Little Rock has purchased Lemke Foods’ inventory for an undisclosed amount and has hired several of Lemke’s employees, primarily salesmen and truck drivers. The purchase will give Quality Foods an additional 400 customers in southern Missouri and eastern Oklahoma.

Lemke says she and her husband still own their 40,000-SF warehouse and meat-cutting equipment in Rogers, which they plan to sell or lease. They also have eight to 10 refrigerated delivery trucks for sale.

“We’re still in business, but we’re closing out,” Lemke says. She says the couple hopes to have the business totally liquidated by the end of the year.

Quality Foods is the nation’s 14th largest food service distributor, featuring foods bearing the Pocahontas label.