For more than 130 years, the Usinger name has been one of the iconic brands in metro Milwaukee. Since 1880, Fred Usinger Inc. has made sausages and cured meats, and the company has passed from its founder, Fred Usinger, to a fourth generation of the family who runs the company today.
Today, the company makes sausage from about 130 different recipes, most of which use old-world European techniques and ingredients.
“About 65 percent of our sausages are what we’d call ‘heritage,'” said Frederick “Fritz” Usinger. “Some are our great-grandfather’s recipes. Others have been tweaked or added over the years.”
Fritz Usinger is the company’s president today, while his sister Debra Usinger serves as its director of retail operations and corporate services. The company is still owned by the Usinger family, but Fritz and Debra are the only two family members that work in it.
“We kind of grew up in the business,” Debra Usinger said. “It’s almost like you get this through osmosis. I can remember people asking Fritz what he was going to be when he grew up and he would say, ‘I’m going to be a fireman,’ and I would be saying, ‘No you aren’t, you’re going to be a sausage maker.'”
Fred Usinger Inc., which operates under the Usinger’s Famous Sausage name, has about 125 employees today. The company still operates in its 60,000-square-foot facility at 1030 N. Old World Third St. in downtown Milwaukee, where it has offices, a retail store and some limited production.
Most of its production is run from a modern 50,000-square-foot facility, which was built in 2004 in the Walker’s Point neighborhood. The new facilities include two traditional wood smokers that preserve much of the old-world production techniques that Usinger’s is known for.
“We could have built modern, faster smokers” Fritz Usinger said. “But we didn’t want to change the flavor and characteristics of the product. That plant is state of the art, but it incorporates old-world manufacturing methods within its walls.”
Today, Usinger’s makes hundreds of different kinds of sausage that range from traditional European styles to modern fare, including a wide range of chicken sausages and modern mix-up styles like pork sausages with apple and gouda cheese, and smoked bratwurst with cheddar and jalapeno. It also makes smoked hams and other cured lunchmeats that it sells at its Third Street retail store and mail order operation.
The balance between modern manufacturing and expanded product lines and their great-grandfather’s vision for the company is something achieved by having Fritz and Debra Usinger lead the company together.
“I view Fritz as the person who has one foot in the future and I have one foot in the past,” Debra Usinger said. “It’s a balance, that reminder of where we are and where we come from while protecting our great-grandfather’s dream. There’s something really special when I can go through the building and I can be in areas that I know that my great-grandfather bought, and my grandfather and my father worked.”
The Usinger family joins an impressive list of recipients of the BizTimes Bravo! Entrepreneur Lifetime Achievement Award. Previous honorees include: Stephen Marcus of The Marcus Corp.; Richard Pieper Sr. of PPC Partners Inc.; Harry Quadracci of Quad/Graphics Inc.; Joseph Zilber of Towne Realty Inc.; Robert Kern of Generac Power Systems Inc.; and George Dalton of Fiserv Inc. and Novo 1 Inc.
