It doesn’t take more than a few minutes after walking through the front door of Perfect Cuts in Columbia Falls to realize it’s a family-owned and operated business to its core.

It’s not uncommon to see three generations bustling behind the counter, in addition to a handful of other employees who seem like family members, too. There is no shortage of familial banter between the crew.

The butcher shop, which has served Columbia Falls and the greater Flathead Valley community since 2000, is a well-oiled machine. Each person has their role, whether it be running the till, trimming and slicing quality cuts of meat, dredging and seasoning others, or any of the other day-to-day tasks.

At the helm of the operations — at least for another month or so until she retires — is Karla Hansen. While it’s clear the shop requires an all-hands-on-deck approach, Karla’s daughter Leslie Hansen-Clewien said her mother has for many years been both the spine and the glue of the Perfect Cuts family.

“My mom has poured everything into this business and it’s really been incredible to watch,” Hansen-Clewien said. “Her and my dad have only taken one vacation since they started this place. It’s been a huge commitment and I’m happy that they will finally have some time for themselves.”

After nearly two decades at the shop, Karla has plans to retire her apron in July, at which time her grandson Koltan Hansen will take on “the headache,” as she jokingly calls the business.

While Karla said she’s excited to have time to check some items off her to-do list — namely paint her house, do some interior decorating and spend more time with her husband, who lives part-time in Fort Benton, and her cats — she said it will certainly be a bittersweet farewell.

“You know you really become married to this business. Anyone who owns a butcher shop and is committed to quality over quantity will tell you that,” Karla said. “It doesn’t just happen overnight, it comes with a lot of hard work.”

KARLA’S WORK ethic is tangible. So much so that it’s one of the first words that comes to mind when her friends and family are asked to describe her. Aside from hard-working, other descriptors include driven, determined, passionate, giving, gruff and, in the words of one long-time employee named Jacki, “a bulldog, but a puppy at heart.”

Although Karla, 66, comes across as a bit of a closed book at first, you can tell one of her life’s priorities has always been her family, which began when she and her childhood sweetheart Dan, sometimes called Danny, married at the age of 20.

“As I say, we married and the rest is history,” she said.

Both Karla and Dan grew up immersed in farm culture in the Fort Benton area and the meat industry and butchering has followed the couple for much of their lives. Karla said Dan learned his knife skills from an old-school butcher more than 40 years ago and has since passed his knowledge and skills onto his family members, including Koltan.

Karla said by natural extension, she would eventually hone her own skills as a butcher as well, although much of her career was centered around cutting and styling hair. In the late 1990s when the couple was considering starting their own butcher shop, Karla said they originally had planned to open both a meat shop and a hair salon — hence the name Perfect Cuts.

“We eventually settled on just the [meat] shop. We figured why have the stress of two businesses and so we threw ourselves into the butcher shop,” Karla said.

At the start, Karla said 18-hour days were not uncommon, and building the shop’s reputation didn’t come without sacrifices. She and Dan have missed out on plenty of family functions and friends’ birthdays, but she said the service they’ve provided the community over the years has made the journey worthwhile.

“We’ve always been here for our community and serving them has really always been our focus,” Karla said. “But we couldn’t have done any of this without these guys,” she added, pointing at her crew.

And since the beginning, she said the shop has always run on one major motto: quality over quantity. Everything is locally sourced as much as possible and has no hormones or additives. There is everything from chicken fritters and premium cuts of seafood to pork chops, sausages, jerky and the shop’s famous tender flat iron steaks. Everything on the shelves, from the sauces to the rubs, are homemade, with love, and many are the Karla’s own recipes.

“There is even a rub called Karla’s Rub and it’s amazing. She knows everything like the back of her hand,” said Leslie, who moved to the valley from Oklahoma more than five years ago to be close to family and to help run the shop. “We have a lot to learn from her still.”

KARLA SAID she has mixed emotions about officially retiring.

“I’ll miss working every day with my family and I’ll miss the community regulars who come in all the time,” Karla said. “They’ve become an extension of our family and serving them has been the best part of all of this.”

She added she is confident the team can carry on the legacy that she and Dan and their many employees over the years have built.

“I think the crew here will live up to what we’ve created,” Karla said. “I think they all understand that it’s not going to be an easy task.”

Koltan, 27, seems ready to rise to the occasion and other team members, including Leslie, Blake Arneson, his sister Kyndall, and Sonny Johnson, a longtime butcher in the valley, will offer him a strong support system.

Koltan said he doesn’t have any major changes in mind for the shop at this current time aside from bringing the technical side of the business more up to speed — something he has already started by launching the Perfect Cuts website amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Aside from that, he added that much of what people have come to love and expect from Perfect Cuts will remain the same.

“As far as the quality of product that we offer, how much of it we offer and our customer service, that will all stay the same,” Koltan said. “I’m going to have a great team to work with, I know that and we know Karla is right up the road, so hopefully she’ll keep showing us the ropes.”

Reporter Kianna Gardner can be reached at 758-4407 or kgardner@dailyinterlake.com