TOLLEFSON FAMILY PORK
ORIGIN STORY
In 1980, Dan and Jenny Tollefson had a dream: they wanted to sell high-quality pork to the masses. Dan had his home-grown farming experience and Dan’s neighbor and friend, Dale Husfeldt, had his knowledge of hog genetics and feed programs. Dan knew these resources could be leveraged to create better pork. Jenny had a background in accounting and natural business sense to manage the numbers. To meet their goal, they partnered with a bunch of suits and created a fancy-pants financial instrument called a corporation. Contract farmers were enlisted to raise hogs with Dan’s feed recipe, processing plants were lined up, and sales contracts with big-box retailers were signed to sell his pork across the continental United States.
Now Dan and Jenny are millionaires and want you to buy their stuff online too… wait a minute… actually…
The big-time pork business didn’t pan out. In fact, if you ask Dan himself, he’ll tell you it was a “spectacular failure” by 1985, the year he started Tollefson Family Pork.
Dan and Jenny pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and tried a new model: only sell pork raised on our farm, run the processing at a local processing plant, and sell all the pork directly to consumers at local Farmers Markets.
The results with this second venture have been much better. If you’ve stopped by the Minneapolis Farmers Market on any weekend in the last 30 years you have probably heard Dan Tollefson hooting and hollering about one of 3 things: his beautiful wife Jenny, his 5 wonderful/terrible children (depending on the day), or why selling directly to customers and having complete control over quality is so important. Chances are you couldn’t resist getting a brat off the grill. Did you forget to pick up some brats for home? Lucky for you, they can be ordered here now.
Go ahead and pick from our hand-curated Pork Boxes. We’ll ship them to you and then you can experience the delicious taste of Tollefson Family Pork without fighting the crowds at the Market!
TASTE THE TFP DIFFERENCE
Tollefson Family Pork tastes better and is healthier than the grocery store brands. All of our hogs are raised on our family farm in Norseland, MN and our processing is conducted at local plants under our supervision. We are one of the very few companies that still offer all-natural meat products. This means that we do not feed antibiotics to our animals or alter them with growth hormones. Plus, all of our pork products are gluten-free and do not have any fillers. Thirty years of experience have led us to the conclusion that Duroc hogs produce meat with perfect marbling, making our products tender and delicious, while remaining lean and healthy.
FEWER CALORIES, BETTER FATS
Compare our bacon to our competitors’ and you will see the difference in how much longer our bacon grease remains liquid. This is due to the fact that our fat is lower in saturated fat and higher in unsaturated fat. Our unique feed program incorporates soybean oil and fish oil into a one-of-a-kind feed mix that gives our pork Omega-3 Fatty Acids. Omega-3 stimulates blood circulation, reducing clots, and has been shown to reduce blood pressure. Taste our pork once and you will notice the Tollefson Family Pork difference!