Meat + Poultry - February 2006 - 26

SMARTER
SAUSAGE PROCESSING
and requests five pounds of Andouille sausage, Norm won't turn them
away if he doesn't have the product
available. He'll make a batch, which
is 25 pounds. But in order to sell the
remaining 20 pounds, Carol searches
the names in her binder for people
who prefer Andouille sausage. Then,
she contacts them and tells them of
the product's availability.
The Sausage Shoppe is careful not
to stray far from what has worked best
for the business over the years. For instance, it doesn't try to keep up with
the trends because most of its customers don't care about the newest tastes.
"We need to keep hammering home
the same message-that our products
are old-fashioned, made by hand and
have been the same recipe for more
than 60 years," Close says.
Rumors of The Sausage Shoppe's
demise are hardly new. About 12 years
ago, a nearby supermarket announced
it was putting in smokehouses to make
and sell its own brand of smoked sausage. Norm says he was told by someone close to the matter that his business "would get blown away" by the
supermarket's foray into sausage making. But that didn't happen because the
supermarket dumped its endeavor less
than a year later.
While the Heinles strive to increase sales, they are handcuffed
when it comes to selling products
outside of Ohio. The Sausage Shoppe
purchases its raw material from Heffelfingers Meats, Jeromesville, Ohio,
a state-inspected operation. "In order to ship across state lines, we'd
have to use product from a federally
inspected plant," Carol says. "That
would change the product because
we would be using different raw material to make it."
Speaking of the product, Norm still
loves to make it. "I've always enjoyed
making it, and I've always enjoyed the
customers," he says, noting the business has sold products to three and four
generations of families who frequent
The Sausage Shoppe.

The Heinles will continue to fight
for the business and not let time
pass by their Old World products.
"We're like the little hardware store
against Wal-Mart," Norm says.

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Larry Aylward is a freelance writer
from Cleveland.
We would like to hear from you- your comments
and questions about this article are welcome.
E-mail the author at: meat&poultry@sosland.com

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Meat + Poultry - February 2006

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