For all the power that big multinational corporations wield, we all know in our hearts that small businesses are not only the backbone of our economy, but also the lifeblood of their communities. And some of them become so beloved over many decades that they simply can’t be allowed to die — not even when the longtime owners have worn themselves out and really need to retire. Someone else needs to step into the breach.
In Saugerties, that has happened twice with the shop just west of town on Route 212 that was originally known as the Veteran Pork Store. It was founded in 1945 by two brothers born in Austria, Bill and Peter Muellner, and designed on the model of a German-style butcher shop and grocery: a genuine Deutsche Metzgerei. Folks came from miles around to stock up on high-quality beef, pork, lamb, veal and poultry products, sausages of all sorts and bacon and other meats smoked on-premises. It was also the go-to store for specialty packaged foods imported from Central Europe: noodles and mustards, krauts and pickles, canned herring in many flavors, traditional sweets and dense rye bread.
After more than half a century, the Muellners were ready to pack it in, and there was no heir apparent interested in taking over the family business. But their clientele weren’t ready to let the place go. So it was that in 2001, a couple with no previous experience in butchering, Mike and Heidi Ferraro, took the plunge and bought the Veteran Pork Store. They worked there for a year to learn the ropes before the keys were handed over, and the Muellners stayed on for another year as consultants before moving out of state. The deal included the building, the equipment and the supplier contacts, but not the business name: They had to rebrand as the Smokehouse of the Catskills.
Wisely, the Ferraros kept doing things the same way the Muellners had done, and carried essentially the same product lines. The store’s loyal following kept on coming. In 2004, Mike and Heidi made a trip to Germany to purchase two high-end, state-of-the-art, energy-efficient smokehouses from the company Maurer-Atmos Middleby, which enabled them to expand their line of smoked meat products. Company representatives visited Saugerties to install the smokehouses and train the staff in the traditional German method of brining slabs of meat in salt water before smoking them for eight to 18 hours.
A separate cold-process smoker was used to smoke cheeses. The Ferraros and their staff, eventually expanded to nine, continued to make all their own knockwurst, bratwurst, liverwurst, salami, sausage, kielbasa, bologna and hot dogs, as well as custom cuts of quality meats to order. If you needed a pre-marinated pot roast for sauerbraten or a whole suckling pig to roast outdoors for an epic-scale party, Smokehouse of the Catskills was the place to go. They even made pâté and smoked their own beef and venison jerky.
Nearly another quarter of a century passed before Mike and Heidi Ferraro decided it was their turn to retire. Last autumn, they announced their intention to close the store, expressing hopes that someone could be found to continue the tradition. The reaction on social media was instantaneous, voluminous and vehement: Hundreds of locals who had grown up enjoying the products available only at the Veteran Pork Store/Smokehouse of the Catskills were reluctant to give the place up. That’s where a new set of Ferraros came in.
“My wife read on Facebook that Mike and Heidi were going to close the store,” recounts Joe Ferraro, who now co-owns the Smokehouse with his son Jim Ferraro, John Roessner and Jana Blazicek. “I said to myself, ‘I don’t like what I’m hearing.’ So, I took them out to lunch and started talking about how to keep the business going. It’s an institution here in Saugerties, and we really didn’t want to see it close.”
Though this was not a dynastic inheritance of ownership, it’s no coincidence that Joe, a Glasco native, has the same surname as Mike. “Mike’s father and my father were first cousins. Our grandfathers were brothers.” Not only that, but their mutual great-grandfather, born in Italy, had been a butcher, so one might say that the knack for the work is in both their genes.
Neither Ferraro cousin had ever planned on such a career, however. Joe is the founder/owner of the manufacturing firm Elna Magnetics, located on Malden Turnpike, and his Smokehouse partners all work there as well. “We’re in the electronics business. I’ve been doing that for 25 years this month. My background is in engineering,” says Joe. “You wouldn’t want me to be the one making your sausage, but I figured I did know how to run a business.”
The new owners took over operations on January 21 without a break in service or major renovations. The shop still has the ambiance of an Old World-style Metzgerei, with a couple of massive antique butcher blocks and a hand-cranked iron sausage-filling machine on display. “They collected a lot of cool old things,” Joe Ferraro notes of his predecessors.
To ease the transition and get all the new owners up to speed on procedures, they kept on four of Mike and Heidi’s longtime employees, including a butcher, a smoking expert and store manager Hannah Mawyin. They hired three new staff, including a butcher trained at the Culinary Institute of America. “There are also a couple of Elna employees who work for the Smokehouse part-time,” says Joe. “One of them does our social media.”
There was a rocky patch this past spring when technical difficulties and a backordered electronic part from the German manufacturer meant that the smokehouses were out of service for a few weeks, but by Memorial Day — their busiest weekend of the year except for Christmas — everything was back to normal. The store seems to be as popular as it ever was under prior ownership, and regular customers are responding enthusiastically to the new product lines that are being added. The Ferraros have used family connections to introduce some hard-to-find imports from Italy, including pancetta, mortadella and Grana Padano cheese. “We’re the exclusive importer of Capanna olive oil from Montalcino,” says Joe.
Asked what’s moving best of the new products, he cites Tuscan fennel salami and Calabrian spicy salami from Golfera. “We can’t keep those in stock.” But he’s quick to note that the new Italian imports aren’t in any danger of displacing the shop’s traditional emphasis on German products. “We’ve made room in our display case because we don’t want to get rid of anything,” he says. All the products available under Mike and Heidi Ferraro’s ownership are still on the shelves, since their successors are mindful that many of these imported delicacies are not available anywhere else within a wide radius, and that locals rely on the Smokehouse as their source.
“The store’s been here next to forever. It’s not broke, so we’re not trying to fix it,” says Joe. “It’s been an institution in Saugerties for 80 years. We want it to keep going for another 80.”
Smokehouse of the Catskills, located at 724 Route 212, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. For more information or to place a special order, call (845) 246-8767. Get updates on specials and new products at www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063597551836.
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