Meat + Poultry - March 2009 - 33

SCIMECA'S

"We've looked at the automated equipment, but it smears the ingredients and
the fat so much that it doesn't do the product justice."
different. "I warned him, 'you'll never
see your kids, so instead let's open a
sausage company,'" Phil remembers. In
1993 they did just that.
Sixteen years later, Frank is president
of the sausage company he and his dad
started from a small facility on Truman
Rd. in Kansas City. "Our first processing
room was a 15 X 25 foot cooler," recalls
Phil, where during the first week in business, Scimeca's Italian Sausage Co. sold
700 lbs. of product. Today, the company
sells over 15,000 lbs. of product per week
and annual sales this year are expected
to top $2 million for the first time.
"We're in every grocery store in the
city," says Phil, and the Scimeca products are ingredients on some of the
finest menus in the metropolitan area.
For foodservice customers, Scimeca
says leanness is a huge issue, especially
in today's economy. "Chefs look at 10
lbs. of our product and know after it's
cooked they'll have nine-and-a-half lbs.,"
he says. "That's profit to them."
As for taking the products beyond
the Kansas City metropolitan area, Phil
says the challenge is the shipping costs,
although the Scimecas are in negotiations to get the products onto the con34

MEAT&POULTRY

March 2009

cession menu of a professional sports
team in Denver, and there is a chance
the products could be sold to a foodservice customer in Las Vegas in the future.
The Scimecas see a lot of potential in
growing its concession business to first
include local college sports venues and
eventually "we want to be in all the college concessions," says Phil.

"We've never touched it,"
says Phil of the recipe.
"Why would we?"
Scimeca's now-famous Italian Sausage uses a recipe the eldest Scimeca
brought over from Palermo, Italy, and
for years sold from the family's grocery
store. The recipe includes imported
Pecorino Romano cheese, part of a formula that has become as sacred as Colonel Sanders' seven herbs and spices.
"We've never touched it," says Phil of
the recipe. "Why would we?"
In true, old-school fashion, Scimeca's
sausages are cranked out by hand, using a table-top linker. It's not that Phil

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hasn't' heard of automated stuffing and
linking systems capable of churning out
thousands of lbs. of product per hour. It
is about the quality of the products, he
iterates. "We've looked at the automated
equipment," says Phil, "but it smears the
ingredients and the fat so much that it
doesn't do the product justice.
Processing 120-lb. batches at a time,
the company's staff of about a dozen
workers diligently churns out about
15,000 lbs. of products per week that
are packaged and labeled at the plant
and distributed to foodservice and retail customers from the company's fleet
of six refrigerated trucks. Through the
years, Phil has learned some tricks
to ensure the quality of his products.
Before any of the sausage is shipped,
for example, it is stored in the walk-in
freezer "to get a little crisp on it," says
Phil. He also points out the importance
of having the same person scooping
and mixing the spices day-in and dayout for the sausage, filling zip-locked
bags with enough spices to season
120 lbs. of meat. "It never changes,"
he says. Similarly, the company's sausage is 82-percent lean product... "all
the time," which gives customers and

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Meat + Poultry - March 2009

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