04-07-25 Interview - We Share A Birthday with Polidori Sausage!

It is our one hundredth birthday this year, and it takes a lot to stay in business for one hundred years, whether you're a radio station or.

You're making sausage.

And joining me now two members of a family that have been making sausage in Colorado for one hundred years. Melody Polar Wait, oh, yeah, turner Ning Polydori Polydori?

Is it Polydori? Is it Polydori?

Polydori Harris and her brother Steve Polydori here to talk about Polydori Sausage, which has been around for one hundred years now. Who wants to start by telling me the family lore behind the sausage company?

Steve, Well, my great grandmother and grandfather started in a small grocery store in thirty fourth in show shown in nineteen twenty five, my grandmother brought her recipes over from Italy and when.

Did she When did they immigrate? Did they both immigrate from Italy to the United States?

Did? And they both went to Magna, Utah.

And my great grandfather had worked in the copper minds and they moved to Colorado because you had black lung disease.

Or what the heck do you?

I mean?

You come into Ellis Island and you immediately go Utah.

That's where I'm going. I mean, how did that happen? Magna? Utah? Magne?

Of course, I mean as one does when you go to Utah. Is there any other city in Utah other than Magna? Do you know how that decision was made?

Well?

So that he was had bad lungs, came here for the cleaner air, obviously on the clear air now.

But they started out of the little grocery store.

And in nineteen forty eight, my great grandfather passed away and my grandfather and my uncle, great uncle took it over, took the grocery store business over. So then in nineteen eighty two my great grandmother passed away, my grandfather started this little business.

Wait a minute, so your great grandma. How old was your great grandmother when she died? She was in her nineties, Okay, so she was there for a lot of this.

And Melody, I want to go to you when you're born of Polydoro is like they bring you over the hall of that old Mandy Polyodori, Paula Dory, Paula Door. I already told her I was going to ask her the name over and over again. I'm on brand, you guys. This is what I am, Who I am, what I do Polydori.

I eat your sausage all the time. I mean, I buy your sausage, so I'm familiar. It's a product.

But when you read a name, you don't necessarily know how it hears. When you're born a Polydori. Polydori, we're you just going to move it from there? Are you come over from the hospital and they just give you a little sausage making kit right then to play with so you can get started in the family business. Sure, was there ever an assumption that you would not work in the business or was there pressure? I guess is what I'm asking to work in the business?

Zero pressure, zero pressure.

And I never graduated from college thinking that I would go work in the family business. I came to the family business in two thousand and two mostly because my brother wanted a little bit of help, and I had been working in other professional careers and consulting, and the opportunity presented itself. And I had always really sort of wanted to work in the family business, but I never thought I would really end up in the family business.

And here you are, these many years later, now Steve. When you I'm assuming you're the day to day guy, because I know that Melody.

Is the chief sausage officer.

Right, we'll find out more about those job responsibilities as a chief sausage officer when you took over, when you assumed the hell, was it difficult because maybe you have some new ideas or maybe you want to change a few things.

Was that transition.

Challenging because you want to honor the tradition but also keep the company, you know, up to dating current.

Yeah, we automated the business, you know, as far as machinery and all that stuff that you know pumps out all the little links and little different shapes and sizes of sausage.

That part was easy.

It was just you know, dealing with a generational gap with my grandfather, right, generation skip and you know, him spending money in certain areas but not in other certain areas where they'd really needed to be spending. You're stepping on dollars to pick up pennies. Well, we got to move on.

So when did your grandfather How long did he hang around the factory after you took over?

He was eighty six when he tired. Oh my god, I bought him out. He was eighty six years old and he hung out. He came down every almost every day until he passed away. He was ninety three when he passed.

You got an old sausage guy like that. He didn't have anything else on his plate, right, and he's gonna come. Yeah, make sure you're not ruining everything that he had built for so long.

Correct.

So, Melodie, when you came in, what did what responsibilities did you take on?

My immediate responsibility was to be dealing with the USDA. We had an audit at the time, and I can remember having an auditor who was really scared and I wasn't because I was blind and didn't know anything, and I had a training and education background and so I was very proficient in Microsoft Word could make changes on the fly.

And he was like, oh my god, you can do that.

Oh oh, and then he started to, you know, get a little bit calmer. So you know, it was I came in extremely blind where it's probably better, and I was just very curious. I asked lots of questions, I visited lost a cush I jumped in feet first, and it was it's been super rewarding.

You guys are successful. I see you in all the markets that I shop in. I buy your products because they're delicious and yummy. How have you avoided or have you just carefully avoided being swallowed up by some other big food company.

Because we're not for sale. Okay, that's a basic point right there. But I mean if somebody comes with a big enough check.

Everything, they say everybody's price, we're having too much fun.

Yeah, we really enjoy what we do, you know, providing sausage to all our customers and just.

I don't know what else I would do. Oh, I'm not ready to sell.

So when you have meetings, do you guys use the phrase this is how the sausage is made literally, whereas we just use it figuratively in corporate America, You guys could actually say no, this is how the sausage is made, and it would be a legit point.

Well, you know, we keep all those recipes under lock and key.

Like the KFC spices, they're in a fault somewhere. No one knows they are, at.

Least sausage recipe.

Yeah, everything is under vault and key.

Everybody's got to sign an NDA and you know all that kind of stuff that do you confidentiality. But I mean we are making the sausage today the exact same way that our great grandmother did right back in nineteen twenty five, albeit in significantly larger batches.

Pork, salt, and spices. Make it simple, keep it simple, and that's why everybody loves our product.

And what this has been a very challenging environment in the past few years, just because of inflation and the cost of things and all of that stuff.

How have you guys managed to mitigate some of that?

I mean, you're producing food, so there's not a whole lot that you can wiggle room there, you know what I mean. Pork, it's going to cost what it costs. Spices cost what they cost. How do you mitigate those sort of business challenges?

I mean, every every business has its challenges with respect to regulations, taxes, insurance, ages and if it's what we kind of take it as it goes, and you know, we have to sharpen our pencils.

We try not to raise our prices.

To our consumers, to the consumers so that they're not reflected in that obviously ease a little bit into your margin, but we try to be as cost effective as possible at our plant by putting in contracts in place with our pork providers and all of our raw material providers to try to offset some of that.

So you're doing pork futures, is what you're telling me, necessarily, but.

Has been relatively stable as far as center of the plate meat, it.

Does seem like it has not been hit the way beef and chicken and and others have been hit.

It's a pretty safe and clean product and.

Really the best meat if you ask me. I'm just going to say, Now, you guys are using the same recipes a great grandma used. Do you ever explore new things?

And if so, what is that process?

Like, well, we get the rest.

If we can get a recipe, that's great, but otherwise we'll figure out what's in it and uh, you know, we get in the kitchen and you know, start playing with it.

Like your hatch chili sausage is super good. Where did that come from? Because your grandma didn't make that.

Well, there was a bunch of like jilapino cheddar broughts out there. We were like, let's make something different, Let's use the hatch. We're looking at Pueblo green chilis or hatch green chilies. Hatch green chilies have a better name, so we decided to go with that hatch instead, much to peblo chagrin.

I'm sure, but we'll just forgive you for that.

Well we will.

But it's a different flavor profile than than the klipino brought worst. Correct, It's just different, definitely milder flavor. Yeah, no, anybody can eat it. But it's got a good pepper flavor. So have you ever tried to make something that was an abject failure?

Plant beast?

You know what?

I totally believe that.

Because we came up with a really good product, but it just kind of went on the wayside.

People won't buy sausage because they I mean, this is the thing I don't understand about vegans, and I'm just gonna say it, like, if you don't eat meat, why are you gonna eat something that's supposed to be.

Eat because they want to eat meat.

Commit commit to just eating the vegetables and just go with that. Are there things that you'd like to try that maybe are outside of your little narrow lane.

I mean, there are things that present itself All the time.

We're pretty busy making our core group of eighty some odd sausages now, oh wow, Yeah, it's a lot between all kinds of shapes and sizes and the Italian arena cherisos breakfast sausages. We do pre cooked meatballs and jewey and where do I I don't see, are you?

Oh no, I've made your meatballs before.

I have a meatball now at King.

Yes, I have made that as well, and they're delicious. We love meatballs in my family. Are there any what are your favorites?

See?

Oh, the Italian sausage is definitely goes. But I can't It's a really kind of a loaded question because I like them all. They're all really this like when.

You ask them after their favorite role and they're like, I just couldn't tell you that have a favorite. Everybody has a favorite. When there's a buffet, then okay, like you know what you go for? You know what the go to item is there? How about humilody?

Probably the cherisy because it's not made with any butts, guts, lips, or jows.

It's pork salt, spices. Now you just implied that the other sausage is made with buttscuts and all that are Yeah, well, I grew up with a dad.

Who thought it was important for us to understand our connection.

To the food chain. So when I was ten, he took.

Us to a slaughterhouse so we could see that portion of Because I lived in you a rural area, I already saw I knew what cows, raising cows was all about. But getting from cow to the grocery store was a challenge, right, that was a big deal. And so we went to a slaughterhouse. We went to a fish stick factory. I have not eaten a fish stick since I was ten years old because of it. Like, if people knew what fish sticks really were, you would never ever put that

Like real meat.

I think people have this misconception that when you get sausage, it is just all scraps.

Work shoulders. What we use works shoulder love or trim.

We run about seventy eight twenty two fatuline ratio, so it's a pretty clean product as far as sausage goes.

That is kind of lean. I mean, isn't it normally like.

Seventy thirty seventy thirty or sometimes you get sixty forty that's why.

It's so greasy? Or what is your favorite thing to make with your sausage?

I have an answer. If you want my answer, I'll just tell you I love sausage balls. Like I'm from the.

South, so whenever you go to a party, there's always sausage balls.

You know what I'm talking about.

Miss Wick sausage cheese really easy, and your sausage makes the best sausage balls.

Good.

I'm gonna have to give them to my friend Crystal, who also makes excellent sausage balls. But I don't know I what the sausage she uses. But do people do you guys have a contest or anything? Like I would have a contest if I were you and just ask people about what their favorite thing is to make with your sausage.

I would enter it. You're one hundred years in you may as well.

You never know what people are gonna come up with little Scotch eggs.

That Grace is over there in the corner going great idea.

Yeah no, and you could all host the winners in here and I will sample all of their.

We should do that.

We'll come back in August to commemorate our hundreds.

Well, we're actually celebrating our hundredth anniversary because KOA is also one hundred. I wonder if your great grandparents listen to KOA.

I'm sure I know my right. I mean everybody listened to KOA, Kansas.

Even across America.

I mean were we were Actually my husband and I were talking, and my husband is an idea guy, and he said, I wonder who in your listening audience has been listening the.

Longest, because we do have people.

That have been here their entire lives, and they have listened to this radio station their entire lives.

And I think that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you guys on. It's like it's not an accident. They are still.

Around after all these years now. Are there kids in.

The family that are already sort of are they interning, are they training?

Are they part of the company yet? Tell me about that for the next generation.

Yeah.

So my son is about to be twenty seven. He has been in an official capacity we won't count the child labor laws before, but he's been in an official capacity for about four and a half years and he's currently in purchasing and shifting sort of to a.

Sales support sales role.

He also ran HR and was doing some accounts payable and accounts receivable.

So is that what you did, Steve? Did you do it?

Oh? That's when I took it over. I did everything. That's why I needed to hire my sister to help me out.

I'm always like, I am overwhelmed.

Over here, Get over here, come quick enough.

In my mind, that's why you've been successful as a family business, right because you know exactly how to do everything in that building correct. And I think it's better just me personally when you make decisions about a business, when you can say, with authority, we can trim the fat over here pun intended, and we can't trim the fat over here. I mean, I just think that there's real value in that. So is he the only kid.

He's the only kid that probably will take on the fifth generation at the moment, I have a daughter that lives in la I have a.

Daughter that cuts hair and step son that that did do their own thing.

You said it skipped a generation from your grandfather to you. How did that process?

Did you come up knowing you wanted to do this or did you know.

When I was in college.

When I was like a junior in college, I was unemployed and my dad came to me and said, your grandfather needs help down with the sausage plant.

Get down there and help them. And that's basically how I started.

So I like people who just go with the flow, Steve, And it seems like you just jumped right into the flow and kept on saleing. I you know, there are worse for you to I got out of college.

You offered me a position and I took it, and I was scared, of course, and didn't know what was going to happen. And I worked with him for ten years before I bought him out.

Do you think that you were just going to do this to get experienced until you found a real job.

Possibly?

Yeah, I mean when I worked for my grandfather to work a second job to supplement my income because my grandfather didn't pay me.

Well, it's like the.

Most grandfather thing I heard in a life. And nobody did pay you. He rubbed the bills together to make sure he was only giving you a five at a time.

And believe I was making more money bartending than I was working with him.

Man, So have you guys ever thought about making sausage out of something else like other kinds of meat.

We do chicken right now, and we do some stuff with beef too, but majority it's pork beef sausage.

I mean, chicken sausage is one of my favorites. I think it's having a moment. Does that sell well very well?

Yeah?

Yeah, I were.

Selling not only on the food service side right now, but.

We are selling in I haven't seen your chicken sausage yet because I would buy it. Because there's only a few brands out there that are good.

A couple of restaurants around town. You can get it out snooze who snoop snooze.

In one of them.

An Urban Egg.

Oh, I love Urban Egg. That's my go to for omelets. They have the best omelets in the metro. In my opinion, can we have a conversation really quick about does the cheese and an omelet belong on the inside of the omelet or on top of the omelet? Because in my lifetime until I moved to Colorado, I never saw cheese on top of an omelet. That makes no sense to me. And apparently it's a thing here.

It depends on the restaurant.

That is the wrong answer, Steve. I need you to be on my side to get the cheese it.

Thank you Melody in the regional pancake. Then well the melody got it. It's just the cheese on the outside. I'm confused by that is what is that even a thing that's happening right now?

Now?

What are you guys doing to celebrate one hundred years We're on this show with you from the cooking contest that you're now going to do with Polydory sausage, and we're gonna have the winners in here to announce where the Somebody just asked, where does the meat come from? And obviously the answer is pigs. But where you get your pigs?

Sustainable farms?

Sustainable farms.

I would love to tell everyone that all of our pork comes here from Colorado, but to be honest with you, there's not very many pig farms here in Colorado. Most of it comes from the Midwest. But we are very careful to source our pork from sustainable farms that are practicing open pen gestation where the pigs roam freely, and those types of things.

Growing up in a.

Rural area, I will tell you I would live next to a lot of farming type industries, but a pig farm is not one of them. I don't care how sustainable it is. Pigs are pigs, and they like to make noises. They're very noisy. Pigs are people don't realize this, and a wee bit smilly, but they're very clean. Oddly enough, people think pigs are like gross.

They're not.

They're very clean animals. It's just pig farming is a lot, especially when they've got room to roam. Yeah, and I might have gotten chased by a feral pig when I was seven years old. This carved me for life. But it's fine.

I'm over it now.

It's all good. That was a horrible thing that happened. And Nandy the cheese should go inside the omelet correct, correct plant based love her Where can we find their sausage? You guys are in every grocery store that I shop in.

Yeah, so every King.

Soupers, every Safe Way, every city market, Spinell's Market, Lever's, Local War, a handful.

Of Moments, market, Woods market up or just open up. So you guys are, But you're in a lot of restaurants too.

That's the majority of our business.

Really, eighty or sense and that's probably solid business too. Like that's you know, that's not necessarily we're.

Sawing palettes instead of one at a.

Time, Right, You're not necessarily kind of stuck with the slings and arrows of customer preferences. Guys, it has been an absolute joy talking to you. Okay, we're gonna your people my people, and we're gonna get the cooking contest well in here because I've already got some ideas, Like I'm ready to bring some stuff because.

I love, love, love to cook. Let's do it.

Did multiple contests like this in the years. We did a spam cook off one year that I still use some of the recipes for the spam cookoff.

It was so good. People made spam enchiladas, they made all kinds of stuff. Are those good? Yes?

I love spam, though, so I might be the wrong person to ask if they're good because I love spam.

I had it this weekend. As a matter of fact. Well this will be fun.

Melody Polodori, Harris and Steve Pollodori.

Did I get right?

You got it right?

No, absolutely pleasure you guys doing an incredible job. Hey, Mandy, please say the brand name of the company you're speaking.

To, Polydori Sausage.

But that is what you're looking for, Polydorisausage dot com.

I put a link on the blog.

Actually you can go and see everything that they have and where to get them. Okay, we'll be back with our contest. I'm hoping to ask you and thank you for the sausage bucket hat. I'm super excited about that, like a little too excited about that.

But now when I go to.

A place that is oh very nice and a bracelet, a friendship bracelet that.

Said sausage best stake ever. On The Bandy Connell Show,