About Us

Our beginnings go back to the 1940’s when local Hale resident Jerry Wyatt began experimenting with his own meat curing and smoking methods. Jerry developed his own recipes for venison smoked sausage, bratwurst, metwurst, breakfast sausage, smoky stix, and especially home cured and smoked bacon and hams!

Jerry’s meats were cured and smoked over an open wood fire, an old-fashioned technique still maintained today. We are one of only a few left still smoking meats the way they did it 70 years ago!

With his homemade recipes ready to go, Jerry partnered with grocer Dale Johnson to open a grocery and meat store, Johnson & Wyatt for Finest Foods in the same location as Alward’s Market today.

Later, when the store was known as Wyatt’s Friendly Market, Wyatt’s home cured meat products and especially his home cured bacon and hams became well known not only around Hale, but also with folks coming to the area to vacation.  

In 1978, after 30 years of establishing a premier meat business, Jerry decided to sell the business to his employee Bob Alward. Jerry had carefully trained Bob in all aspects of the meat business including getting the home curing and meat smoking just right. And of course how to make the signature bacon.

Bob and his wife Kathy Alward revised the name to Alward’s Market and they would own the business for the following 40 years.

During that time, Bob maintained and refined the recipes handed down by Jerry. He would build the business as a thriving meat market and grocery store. Still, the claim to fame was the home cured bacon and hams.

Bob and Kathy would continue to develop a reputation built on meats of the highest quality and continue to wood-smoke the same old-fashioned way as Jerry Wyatt did back in the beginning.

Under Bob’s leadership, Alward’s Market would make their own jerkies, hand-stuffed sausages, German bologna, and metwurst that would be unique from all others. He also continued to maintain a full-service meat counter where you could have your steak inspected and cut to your specifications, just as was done generations ago.

In 2018, after 40 years of building a successful business, Bob and Kathy sold the business to a local businessman Terry Bovee, also the owner of The Victorian Café in Hale.

Terry and the crew at Alward’s Market are dedicated to maintaining the same products and quality that both Jerry and Bob established over the previous 70 years.

We know that when you try Alward’s Market home cured and smoked meats you will recognize why we have 70 years and counting of great, quality meat products!

And yes, we are still Makin’ Bacon!