Our Story
The Ponderosa Meat Company had its start in 1947 as Reno Frozen Food Lockers. Brothers-in-law George L. Siri, Sr. and Willie Carano opened the butchering business and frozen locker plant after partnering for years at downtown’s Silver State Bakery, which they sold to Frank Welsh in 1946. Siri purchased the land and topped the business operation with four small one-bedroom apartments.
Their new venture was perfectly timed for the postwar era, enabling customers to rent lockers to store food that could not fit in the typical home freezer. Advertised as the “Most Modern Frozen Food Plant in the West,” the building contained 972 lockers, each six cubic feet in size. In addition, the business offered butcher service, aging and chill rooms for meat, and cold storage for fur coats and accessories.
Siri’s son, George L. Siri, Jr. bought his father’s interest in the business after returning from service in the U.S. Navy in 1954, and for a short time, he and his wife, Sue, lived in apartment #4 upstairs.
The deer hunting season, generally September to the end of November, brought an enormous annual surge of business—at one point bringing in more than 2,000 deer in a single year. As Siri, Jr. recalls, “We hired extra help, usually a butcher, a deer skinner, one or two women meat wrappers and a cleanup crew.” Many area ranchers also brought in their beef for processing.
In 1973, Siri and Carano sold the business to Don O’Day and Bruno Mastelotto and left to help run the family’s new Eldorado Hotel-Casino. Finding that the casino business wasn’t for him, Siri partnered with O’Day and Mastelotto in 1974 to create the Ponderosa Meat Company.
The new corporation entered into the wholesale meat business with restaurants, casinos, and other clients, prompting an expansion of the building on the Holcomb Avenue side and a gradual phasing out of the rental lockers. For the last 40 years, the company is a full-service retail and wholesale butcher shop run by members of its founding families. Specifically, Bobbie and Rocky Mastelotto ran the operation for years. After Rocky retired, Bobbie continued running the company for the last decade.
In 2024, Bobbie was seeking to retire after working in the business for over 53 years. He and his family put the business up for sale.
Enter the Hoaglands! The Hoagland family is a multi-generational ranching family in Southern Idaho. They not only raise some of the finest cattle in the country, they also own processing operations in Owyhee county, working with local ranchers to offer superior meats to both restaurants and consumers throughout the Treasure Valley of Idaho.
In 2023, they were chosen by University of Nevada, Reno to take over the troubled processing plant owned by the University, Wolf Pack. This brought them in contact with Bobbie Mastelotto and Ponderosa Meats, as they did business together with many local ranchers. After vetting the business, The Hoaglands and a small team of investors made an offer and purchased the business.
JD Hoalgand, along with his parents, Rex and Karen, now run Ponderosa Meat and are actively growing it. They have launched an online presence, are expanding their wholesale operations, and will soon be offering retail delivery direct to consumers' homes.