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Portland Tribune
By KATE GAWF
Issue date: Tue, Jul 6, 2004
Meat wholesaler sells its links all across the region
It’s a rare grocery store or hot dog stand in Oregon or Southwest Washington that doesn’t carry products from Zenner Meats, the 76-year-old maker of what might be called healthy sausages. Zenner makes sausages with meat from local farms, without artificial ingredients or preservatives. It’s an urban myth, Portland sausage maker George Zenner Jr. says, that hot dogs are made from slaughterhouse odds and ends. As with all meat-producing facilities across the country, a federal food inspector works full time at Zenner’s Northwest Kearney Street factory, occupying an office there every day the factory is producing Zenner-brand meat.
The classic hot dog is one of 24 types of sausage Zenner makes — from German bockwurst and braunschweiger to Polish kielbasa and Mexican chorizo. The company also makes a line of sausages using naturally grown chicken and pork, without nitrates or MSG.
Ron Johnson, meat manager at the Zupan’s Market on Southwest Macadam Avenue, which carries Zenner’s natural line, says the sausages are much in demand. “No. 1, they use all-natural ingredients,” Johnson says. “People are really into the natural thing these days, so that’s good for Zenner’s and it’s good for us. No. 2, they’re a local company, and people are really into the local stuff, so that’s another bonus. Plus they’re a lot leaner, and their flavor’s better than a lot of their competition. So that’s why they sell.”
Though the natural line is slightly more expensive — chicken basil sun-dried tomato sausage retails for $4.95 a pound, versus the regular brand at $3.55 a pound — its sales are increasing.
Zenner dogs are also the official sausage of PGE Park, where baseball and soccer fans can indulge for only a buck on “Dollar Dog Wednesdays.” Zenner also supplies a number of Portland restaurants.
Some of the company’s sausage recipes were handed down from George Zenner’s grandfather Phillip Zenner, a Portland farmer and butcher. Others have been added over the years, catering to contemporary trends. “Most of the current ones, I’ve developed along with my master sausage maker, Dick Maxson,” says Zenner, who calls Maxson “one of the last of the old masters.” As the company’s “sausage superintendent,” Maxson has worked for Zenner for 26 years; before that he’d already accumulated 15 years of sausage-making experience.
George Zenner Sr. didn’t have to work to persuade his son to take over the family business. As a boy in the 1940s, George Jr. couldn’t wait to get to his father’s butcher shop after school, then at Northeast 53rd Avenue and Glisan Street. His first job was peeling the casings off the hot dogs, and from there his duties evolved with his age — he remembers finally being allowed to handle a knife. By the time he was an adult, he was proficient in every aspect of the butcher trade. He took over the business completely when the older Zenner retired.
After 68 years in the same location, the Glisan shop outgrew itself. The wholesale part of the business, which occupied three-fourths of the building, had begun to outperform the retail part. In 1986, Zenner made the difficult decision to shut down the retail end of the business and use the entire building for wholesale. It was a sacrifice for both the business and the shop’s loyal neighborhood clientele.
The 30-person business continued to grow, and in 1995, Zenner’s moved across the Willamette River. Despite the company’s growth, Zenner says it will remain “a niche operation, and we want to stay in our own little niche.”
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