GREGG MEYER & BETTY MEYER

MEYER’S SAUSAGE COMPANY
600 S. MAIN STREET
Elgin, TX 78621-3338
(512) 285-3331
www.cuetopiatexas.com

“Buddy Meyer’s beans were famous around Elgin. So, everybody tried to make beans like he did when he cooked for, like, weddings and things. So, that—his was the mark. If you could get beans to taste as good as Buddy Meyer’s, you were in good shape.” – Betty Meyer

Sometime in the 1930s, Rudolph Meyer began selling his homemade sausage out of his small community store in Elgin, Texas, The Rockfront Grocery. His sausage proved so successful that he soon branched out to restaurants and groceries in Austin where he would sell his products out of the trunk of his car. Mr. Meyer formed Meyer’s Sausage Company in 1949 when the demand for his sausage required a much larger production process. The company has since been passed along through his son and daughter-in-law Buddy and Betty Meyer, and to their sons Gregg and Gary. Today, Meyer’s Sausage Company ships their products across Texas and the nation, while featuring their sausage at Meyer’s Smokehouse, a barbecue restaurant the family opened in 1998. While Gregg develops new products and runs the day to day operations at the sausage plant, Gary and his wife Becky run the restaurant and handle the burgeoning catering business.

Listen to this 2-minute audio clip of Gregg Meyer talking about the rage of their distribution and their competition. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Gregg Meyer and Betty Meyer
Date: July 24, 2007
Location: Meyer’s Sausage Company - Elgin, Texas
Fieldwork Director: Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt
Fieldwork Team: Marvin Bendele

Produced in association with the American Studies Department at The University of Texas at Austin and the Central Texas Barbecue Association.

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Marvin Bendele: One of the first questions I really wanted to ask is how did you guys get started in the sausage business here in Elgin?

Betty Meyer: My father-in-law began making the sausage in small batches in the grocery store that they had. And the neighbors liked the sausage so—and the recipe so—and they told him he should start selling, so we began making it and taking it to Austin.

What was his name?

BM: Rudolph Meyer.

And the small grocery store was here in Elgin?

BM: It’s our—where we began inspection initially with the sausage company. It’s located at the corner of our property now.

What year was that—did y’all get started doing this.

BM: Actually producing and selling—I believe 1949. Is that right Gregg?

Gregg Meyer: That’s when they formed the company. He was making the sausage—probably late thirties, early forties at the Rockfront Grocery is what it was.

That’s the name of it—Rockfront Grocery?

GM: Yes.

Well, and so this was your father-in-law. Did pretty much everybody in the family work in the business?

BM: Well, they were children when they began. My husband was a child then, but when they grew up he was in service—he was a telegrapher for the railroad—and when he came back from the army, he began with his dad in the sausage company. And that would be in 1955.

How old was he then?

BM: Oh, you’re going to have to ask me—he was—[Laughs]—he was twenty-three.

And so he did that pretty much all of his life?

BM: Yes. He died at fifty-six.

Well, so—Meyer’s Sausage began in the forties. How did it evolve? When did they start processing and packaging and things like that?

GM: Well, they were, um—basically, he was selling it out of the back of his car. He was taking it to local groceries. They started getting out in—a little into the central Texas area like Taylor, Cameron, Rockdale, places like that. And then I think it was, what, the late fifties, early sixties when they went into Austin.

How has the production process changed over the years to accommodate the growing numbers of customers? I’m sure it’s changed from selling it out of the back of a car to today, obviously.

GM: The basic process of actually making the sausage is very similar. It’s just the equipment has gotten much larger. The grinding, the—the particles—the diameter of the meat particles is exactly the same as what my grandfather used. The stuffers are a lot different, where they used to use essentially what was a piston stuffer that would press the meat up and through the stuffing horn. It now goes into what’s called a vacuum stuffer that pulls all of the air out and it’s worked much less than what it was previously. The smokehouses that you used to build a small fire outside in a little block house and then put sawdust over it, then had one little fan that would pull the smoke in to the smokehouse and let it smoke overnight. We now have processing ovens that we can put four or five thousand pounds of sausage in there. The air flow changes in the smokehouse about fifteen times a—fifteen times a minute, if I’m not mistaken. And the processing is done in about three, three-and-a-half hours.

Where as before, how long did it take?

GM: It would be all night.

Well, before you get to the drying process or smoking, can you give me a little bit about, you know, without giving away any secret recipes or anything, what goes into the sausage?

GM: Well the majority of our sausage is all pork. Of course, we use some different cuts of pork to go into that. We have a beef sausage. And then we have a pork and beef mix, which is called our hot. The sausage basically is ground through two different kinds of grinds. It’s a coarse grind and then it’s run through a finer grind, where the spices and all of the ingredients are added.

Maybe you can give me the technology that’s evolved in the grinding process as well. Did they hand grind it before, whereas now it’s several—?

GM: Actually, if you can look at some of the old pictures, you know, back in the—even when my grandfather was doing it. What they would do is they had two grinders mounted one on top of the other, where you would have the coarse grind, which would grind directly into the second grinder. What they would do is they would mix the seasonings in by hand, before the meat was actually put in the first grinder. The way it’s done now is the meat is ground through the first coarse grind, which is the same diameter they used to grind it. It’s put into a mixer grinder and that’s where all of the ingredients are added and mixed. And then its ground into the second final grind. The equipment is—it’s just much larger, but it basically does the same job.

Now, your father, I think, Gary [Gregg’s brother] was telling me that he always barbecued. He’d be in the backyard with the fork in one hand and a beer in the other. I was wondering how often he did that? And how famous he was around the town for that?

BM: I’ll answer that one. He had the first large, rolling barbecue pit, mobile barbecue pit in Elgin. He had it built. And so he cooked always for any fundraisers or anything. He—Buddy was the lead cook. Buddy also traveled a lot to judge barbecue cook-offs, St. Thomas, all over Texas. So, Buddy was probably the premier barbecuer in Elgin, and he did judging in a lot of places.

Now would he cook the sausages that he made?

BM: Oh, yes. Sausage always, chicken was a real good thing, and he even did—well, of course, he did beef. And then I had an uncle that he learned to do mutton from, so. So, all the meats were covered.

I was wondering if the same recipes that Buddy used is what—is that what you guys use?

GM: Yeah. The rub, the brisket rub is essentially his recipe. The bean seasoning is also his. That was how he made his beans. It was a little bit modified because of a commercial process that we had to do. Where he would use the huge cast-iron cooking pots, couldn’t really use that in a restaurant application. But basically the seasoning was essentially the same.

Did he learn this stuff from his father?

BM: Mr. Meyer did do cooking, but Buddy probably developed it himself because he was a people person and he loved to cook for weddings and things. So, that’s how he really started, you know, cooking our—we had a good product to cook, so he was always proud to cook it and serve it.

What’s your biggest seller, product-wise?

GM: The all-pork garlic sausage, by far. That’s our biggest seller in the grocery stores.

Yeah? When did you start producing that?

BM: Originally [Laughs], it was one of the original flavors, yeah. Garlic has always been the best seller, as long as we—I mean, I think that’s the original sausage he made to sell.

GM: What was the guy’s name? The one that was always after Papa about putting—putting the garlic in the sausage—wore the—the helmet over there on the corner all the time.

BM: Bob Bostick—our neighbor. Oh, I know now. He ate garlic all the time [Laughs]. So, people used to eat onion. Well, this gentleman ate garlic and he insisted that Mr. Meyer put more garlic in it. So, I don’t know if that was the reason or not, but it’s always been our best seller.

Now, when you say this gentleman ate garlic, did he just eat it—straight?

BM: Yes, raw, raw garlic.

GM:  Garlic with everything.

BM: Yes, I mean, he ate actual pods of garlic. So, he didn’t have blood pressure problems since it has medicinal properties.

So, did he have a little bit of influence in getting the garlic sausage made or he just tried—

BM: Oh, well, no. We were making it, but he always wanted more garlic in it.

Where do you produce the other products like your barbecue sauces?

GM: The sauces are co-packed for us. We have a private labeler in San Antonio that does it to our recipe that Mom went down there and tested. We had had a smaller bottler a long time ago that used to bottle our product. He went and changed some things to cheapen the recipe, and, you know, we started tasting it. She was saying, “It’s not the same.” We had to pull a lot of stuff off the shelves because it wasn’t our barbecue sauce. And so, when we went to the new bottler and ran the first test batch, she went to San Antonio with us—so we could get her seal of approval to make sure that it tasted—

BM: I made a batch and he made a batch.

GM: Properly.

Well, I guess, where does it—does it get mixed down there as well, or do you guys send it to them just to get it bottled?

GM: No. They—they manufacture it according to our recipe.

OK.

BM: Hopefully, I told them for six months they’re doing something to this barbecue sauce, it’s not right, you know, it’s not our recipe. And of course, we finally—they finally admitted and we had to change bottlers. Yeah, because it was—they were not doing—putting all the ingredients for our recipe, and it made a tremendous difference.

And you—how did you do it originally?

BM: OK. Well, we—I did the recipe to taste, and then, Gregg, I’ll have to explain this. My mother-in-law made it, and I knew how to make it as she did, but I didn’t have it down, like, by so many ounces of this and so many ounces of that and all that. So he said, “Mom I have to have the recipe.” He came to my home and I made it to taste, and he drove me crazy. I’d say, “I have to add, you know, more of this.” He’d say, “Measure it, measure it, measure it.” And we finally got it, so we could have a recipe to make it. And, you know, that you could give to anyone else to make. It took us quite a while and a lot of headaches to get it down just exactly to taste because I knew how to make it, but my mother-in-law taught me, but we finally got it. So, it was like hers.

So is it safe to say, though, if I came to your house and y’all barbecued and you made some homemade sauce, it would probably be better than what I got in the bottle.

BM: I don’t think so, as long as they follow that recipe—original recipe—we’re OK [Laughs]. It’s very good. I used to make it and give it. By them bottling it, it took away my Christmas gifts because I used to make it and give quarts of barbecue sauce as Christmas gifts. And now, they can all buy it. So, I don’t have a—it’s my taken away my gift—Christmas gift.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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