Min-gu-what? Fans may not know how to say it but they still grab bags of beef jerky

Many families make memories around the kitchen table and the Mingua Family is no different. Actually, it is kind of different because they also made a major Kentucky company.

When Ron Mingua wasn’t working on his Paris farm tending to everything from tobacco to corn and cattle, his daughter Holly Mackey said, she remembered he had a passion for cooking. In 1993, after seeing an infomercial for a beef dehydrator, he cooked up an idea.

“He just came up with this recipe and started cooking it in the house. We would actually bag the jerky at the kitchen table for a while,” Holly said. “Farmhands would try it and tell him what they liked, what they didn’t like, until he got the perfect recipe.”

That perfected beef jerky recipe eventually became Mingua (pronounced Min-Gee) Beef Jerky, which was born in the Bluegrass State but is starting to grow an appreciative following well beyond Kentucky’s borders.

But before expanding beyond Kentucky, the first thing Mingua Beef Jerky had to do was move beyond the walls of the Mingua home once the USDA informed the family they would require a federally inspected building to sell its product. This led to building a simple 1,000-square-foot space on Ron’s farm in 1994. As the business expanded, so did the square-footage, resulting in creating a second larger facility (10,000 square feet) in 2000 before ending up at its current 30,000-square-foot production facility.

Based on how business is going, Curtis Mackley, vice president of Mingua Beef Jerky and Holly’s husband, said Mingua Beef Jerky will need an additional 50,000 to 60,000 square feet to keep up with demand.

“We are growing quickly. Quicker than we ever imagined,” he said.

The popularity of Mingua Beef Jerky can largely be traced back to its original home-kitchen-created flavor and a dedication to keeping that taste intact. The recipe for its original jerky (still the company’s best seller) uses beef, soy sauce, brown sugar and liquid smoke and is what Mingua, 69, made in his kitchen at an initial output of two pounds a day.

The company doesn’t use preservatives, relying on the salt content of the soy sauce to preserve the meat. According to Curtis, comparing many other popular beef jerky brands to Mingua would be like “hot dog versus a roast.”

“Our customers are more into health and really looking at what they put in their body. They want a more natural product,” Curtis said. “We use one part of the cow that you would actually go to a store and purchase.”

Mingua Beef Jerky didn’t want its quality to suffer when it started using large commercialized dryers to create huge quantities of jerky in 2004. When they hit some snags in the transition, Curtis said they consulted with the University of Wisconsin and talked to experts in “meat science” to translate what they were doing in Ron’s home oven to a commercial setting.

“We take pride and our employees take pride in what we are doing to get the best product out there,” Curtis said. “Our jerky is pretty much made to order. It’s not sitting out in a warehouse somewhere.”

“And it’s been that same way since day one,” Holly added.

Mingua Beef Jerky has eight flavors ranging from original to sweeter flavors like BBQ, Sweet and Hot, Hot, Teriyaki, Cajun, Bourbon, and Garlic and Onion. They have also expanded beyond bagged jerky, offering beef jerky strips, shredded jerky and even dog treats.

Besides being available all over the state, Mingua Beef Jerky distributes to every state bordering Kentucky, as well as Chicago, a good chunk of Florida and “a lot of states in between,” according to Curtis. Without even tapping into western U.S. market, the company is currently ranked as the No. 6 beef jerky brand in the country.

Holly said Ron continues to be active with the company in semi-retirement when it comes to quality control and is consulted with larger company decisions while he continues to tend to his farm and do the occasional mowing, bulldozing and chainsawing.

“He’s very proud and it’s really unbelievable,” Holly said. “This building was supposed to last us many years and we are busting at the seams. We are currently three weeks behind on orders. We can’t get it out the door fast enough.”

For Holly and Curtis, the company has come with some unexpected benefits in the way it has allowed them to give to charity and the possibility of their children, 15-year-old son Cannon and 5-year-old daughter Aria, carrying the business forward. Cannon has become more and more involved, going from squeegeeing when he was a toddler to working at the facility every summer. Aria is also creating product awareness ... in her own way.

“She’s just realizing that the jerky is actually ours,” Holly said. “Her friends ask her to bring beef jerky. She gets excited to do that.”

Curtis said Mingua Beef Jerky started as a grassroots company on Ron’s farm and has taken the same approach to its growth strategy.

“As opportunities come along, we just roll with it. We grow and grow. We’re not, ‘we have to quadruple in size by 2025.’ More demand, we add more equipment. More demand, we add more employees,” he said.

“We don’t take any of this for granted,” Holly said. “Every day, we wake up and realize how truly blessed we are to get to do what we are doing every day.”

More information on Mingua Beef Jerky can be found at minguabeefjerky.com.