Meat+Poultry - February 2020 - 20

SAUSAGE PROCESSING

and you'll see it on a lot more menus in the
coming years."

CONTROLLED GROWTH

Organic, sustainable
growth in both retail
and foodservice remain
Saddleberk's ultimate goal.

"It was more of us selling it to them versus
other distributors that wanted it," Rigo says.
Michael's assured Rigo and Saddleberk
that it would handle the business correctly
and emphasize making the most of the deal for
both companies. The partnership has blossomed and grown, and Rigo and Saddleberk
are thoroughly satisfied with the relationship.
"They've gotten us into a number of different restaurants around the country," Rigo says.
"There's obviously a focus here in Ohio, but
in general, we're in Chicago and Beverly Hills
and all kinds of different places in multiple
different restaurants. It's kind of nice to claim
that we have a restaurant in Beverly Hills that
serves our pork."
Once Pickaway breaks carcasses down
to primals, Michael's also does a few specific
cuts at its shop for Columbus-based Cameron
Mitchell Restaurants.
While retail remains the bulk of
Saddleberk's business, Rigo believes the restaurant sector offers great, untapped growth
potential for the company. He compares the
popularity of high-end breeds of beef such as
Kobe and wagyu, and their rise in mainstream
notoriety with consumers, to what Berkshire
pork is starting to become.
"I think we're just barely tapping the surface with the higher end pork breeds," he says.
"I think as that continues to evolve and people
understand more about it and the higher quality, restaurants will demand it more and more

MEAT+ POULTRY | 02.20 | www.meatpoultry.com

To maintain the quality Saddleberk strives to
achieve, the company takes meat samples from
Pickaway and audits farms at least quarterly.
Saddleberk checks samples for marbling
and pH while farms are audited for humane
handling practices and animal well-being.
"We have certain animal welfare standards that we want to maintain," Rigo says.
"We make sure the animals all have access to
open air and straw bedding. There's definitely
something to the fact that happy animals produce better quality. It's good, both the animal
welfare aspect and the finished product."
Unlike the beef industry's prime, choice
and select grades, which come from a technical standard, pork relies on the knowledge of
experts and those with industry experience to
gauge quality. Other than using OSU occasionally to sample the meat quality and ensure
the pH meet Saddleberk's specifications,
Saddleberk maintains quality itself.
"It's us making sure," Rigo says, "there's
no professional auditing firm that we use or
anything like that."
In addition to monitoring and ensuring quality, Rigo and Saddleberk focus on relationships
with current and potential custormers. In the
past year, Saddleberk has grown its business
about 75 percent, but as growth continues,
those percentages will naturally go down.
Currently, Saddleberk sells nearly everything it produces weekly, and prefers to operate that way rather than carrying an inventory
for which it will need to find customers.
"We're looking for more partners that want
to be long-term partners," Rigo says. "In our
business, you can't put 20 or 30 more sows
down and then have a customer go bad on you
and have a glut of pork that you can't sell."
Rigo says Kroger and Heinen's have been
"...absolutely fantastic to work with." With
the two local retailers ordering mostly sausage products, Rigo sees a future where both
carry a more diverse product mix, as well
as seeing that product mix across a more
regional landscape.
"It would be nice to get a few more retailers
and then obviously continue to grow the restaurant and foodservice business," he says.

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Meat+Poultry - February 2020

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