After all these years, Renea Yamada still will make a Sunday chicken.
The chicken, she says, is what her father, Robert “Bob” Egger, used to cook on weekends for his family – a simple recipe of salt, pepper and flour, the Sunday meal will remain a tradition.
Egger died last week following a fall at age 86 after 60 years in the meat business.
Egger, a Spokane native, owned Egger’s Better Meats and Seafood on Perry Street near 57th Avenue on Spokane’s South Hill. The business was part of the Egger meat market legacy in Spokane, spanning generations that reached as far back as the early 1950s. The Eggers were and are still known for their personalized service, meat cut to order and specialized smoked meats. Currently, there are four meat markets in Spokane County that are individually owned and operated by members of the Egger family. Their family homestead still is located in Chewelah where the business began with a mission: quality.
“We’ve been at it longer and more successfully than just about anybody in town,” Egger told The Spokesman-Review in 1983, calling the family operation “the old country-type business.”
“He was hardworking, strict, honest and proud,” Yamada, his eldest daughter, said in an interview Wednesday.
Egger’s uncle, John Egger, was the man who founded the original Egger meat business on Spokane’s north side in 1953. He took his young nephew under his wing and helped him learn the trade in the meat business as a high school student at North Central until encouraging him to take up a position at a grocery store, Yamada said.
He met his wife, Cathryn, on a train from Duluth, Minnesota, and the two wed in 1962.
After learning the grocery ropes, Egger opened his first meat market at 15th Avenue and Bernard Street in 1964. He ran the market out the back of a separate store he had leased from the owner. In 1977, he moved Egger’s Better Meats South farther up the hill to the business park at 29th and Regal, formerly known as Owen’s Foodland. When Bill Owens gave up his lease on the building that housed Egger’s market, Egger came across an old 7-Eleven building on 57th and Perry Street in 1984. He split the building use with a liquor salesman.
“He was out of the house by 6 a.m. He would come home, lots of times only to eat and go back to work that night until 10 or 11,” Yamada said.
Yamada began taking the bus to the south side to run the cash register as soon as she turned 12. She was tired of babysitting, she jokingly recalled.
“As counter help, you didn’t say, ‘Is that all?’ you say, ‘What else can I get for you?’ ” Yamada said. “We were expected to put a bright smile on our face at all times. You weren’t late, and you weren’t lazy.”
And the Egger family was not lazy. His hardworking tendencies rubbed off on his four children as some of them would take up shifts to help their father at the South Hill market.
“It was up to us to make sure the cleaning got done. If he cut steaks, he didn’t wipe down the saw, we did,” Yamada said. “He didn’t tell us to do it, he expected you to know it needed to be done.”
Yamada’s favorite memory of her father lies outside of the meat business, however. His siblings owned a property on Twin Lakes where Egger would teach his children how to fish and water ski.
“He was the most relaxed at the lake because he wasn’t at work,” Yamada said. “But even sometimes from the lake he would go into work and come back to the lake for dinner.”
Once Egger retired in the early ’90s, he and his wife began to fulfill their dreams of traveling the country. They bought an RV, joined a Washington state Winnebago club and would rack up 400 to 500 miles a day driving across the U.S. They loved historic towns the most, Yamada said, but would always find their way back to where she lived in Arizona.
“They were called ‘parkers’ and would park the motor homes coming across the country to go to this national convention. They would park people by their state,” Yamada said. “He just loved traveling.”
Egger is survived by his wife, four children, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. His two sons, Jeff and Steve, the current owners of Egger’s Better Meats and Seafood, 5609 S. Perry St., will continue the market’s operations. A memorial service date has not been announced.
“He taught all his children the responsibility of working hard for the family business, and to keep your family close,” the Egger family wrote of Bob on Facebook.