"...Tanya Nueske likes to joke that she was smoked from birth. She’s certainly been around bacon all her life.
Nueske, who is in her early 40s, is the third generation of the family that founded Nueske’s, the Wisconsin producer of bacon, ham and sausage that appears by name on restaurant menus across the United States.
If you know about applewood smoked bacon — bacon that is smoked using wood from apple trees — it’s because of Nueske’s. For bacon fans, its store and factory in Wittenberg, Wisconsin is the same kind of draw that Lambeau Field in Green Bay is for football fans.
Nueske’s is a family business that exemplifies Hometown Holdouts. Although her father and grandfather had many offers to expand and sell, they remained loyal to their manufacturing plant in the Midwest, which Nueske now runs.
“We’re that little smoking shop that everybody used to have,” Nueske says. As for expansion, “We said no when we felt we should have. We are very focused on our customers.”..."
Read the full Forbes article by Micheline Maynard here.