Sausage Partners like the local links
[attach]5381[/attach]Sausage Partners is home to more meat than just sausages.
“The name kind of suggests that it’s only sausage but we’ve got quite a lot more — there’s pig, beef, buffalo, duck and everything in between,” says Lorraine Deming, half of the husband and wife duo behind the new butcher shop on Queen Street East near Greenwood Avenue. “We also have sustainable fish, local produce and a selection of preserves that are made with produce too.”
Lorraine and Kyle previously worked in restaurants in Australia, Scotland and most recently in Toronto, but were inspired to pursue a meatier career when their handmade smoked sausages became a big hit at a birthday party.
“People lost their minds, they were like ‘Where can we get these?’ ” Lorraine says. “And we kind of thought, nowhere yet and it took us about three years to get from that initial idea to this.”
The couple also teamed up with farmers from Kawartha Ecological Growers, who supply their vegetables and meat — aside from game — and say the partnership is also fitting to their namesake.
This month they will also start selling beans from Red Rocket Coffee, which used to be located several doors down from their shop, but recently had to relocate due to an increase in rent.
“In order to kind of keep them in the neighbourhood, beloved that they are, we’re going to sell their beans starting next week,” Lorraine says. “Sadly not the coffee ready to go, but definitely the beans.”
She says her pickled products stem from old cookbooks and her grandma’s recipes, while the sausages, Kyle says, are flavoured as simply as possible so they taste pure. One of their most popular concoctions to date combines two popular breakfast foods.
“It’s bacon and sausage together as one in a breakfast size,” Lorraine says. “We made it kind of as a laugh the first time and men in particular lost their minds when they saw it.”
They say one of their concepts is to connect people with where their food comes from and to offer free-range meats that are hormone and antibiotic free for both customers as well as restaurants.
“Because we’re so transparent if you want to meet the guy that raised your pig, you can do it, and if you want to know exactly where your pork chop came from, I can introduce you to the guy that raised it,” Kyle says. “I can show you how he farms his animals and why I feel good about serving it so that you can feel good about eating it.”
Twenty years from now, they hope they will still be running the family business and working for themselves.
“We’re not trying to make a million dollars, we’re just trying to do a good thing and work the way we want to work,” Lorraine says.
“We have no kind of franchise goals or anything like that or we’re not like opening Sausage Partners West next year because it’s the thing to do,” Kyle adds. “All we wanted to do was have a little butcher shop and so here we are now with our little butcher shop.”
