A $1-million enterprise built on specialty sausages is facing a tough choice: go big or risk losing the small-town family brand.
Lunenburg Pudding and Sausage Ltd. in Bridgewater, known locally as Greek’s Meats, produces two marquee products — a pork and beef sausage called Lunenburg Pudding that is served hot or cold and a lean-beef Lunenburg Sausage.
Both are spiced according to a South Shore family recipe handed down to the founder of the business, Victor Greek, who passed it on to his sons, Richard and Randy.
The pudding and sausage are favourites among Nova Scotians in Ontario and Alberta, who stock their coolers on visits home, and snowbirds, who pack winter supplies when they leave for Florida.
Along with a minced fruit-and-meat mixture for tarts and desserts, these products make up one-third of sales for this business, which has wholesale and distribution arms to complement its retail sales of beef, pork, poultry, fish and cheese.
Until last summer, Richard Greek, now sole owner, was distributing the specialty items directly to Sobeys and Atlantic Superstores in Halifax, Dartmouth, the Valley, southwestern Nova Scotia and to independent retailers. But in July, national supermarket giant Loblaw Co. Ltd. said its Atlantic Superstore chain would stop carrying the products.
“They were a major customer of ours,” says Greek. “Their head meat person came to us and told us they needed (to buy meat) from a federally inspected place — and we’re not.”
Meat prepared and sold within the province is subject to provincial inspection, while meat that crosses provincial borders comes under more costly and onerous federal regulations.
For a butcher who still wraps meat in brown paper and string and stays closed on Sundays, to make time for family and church, saving his small-town business will demand major changes late in life. Greek is 70.
To regain the lost Loblaw sales or export outside the province directly, Greek must build a new plant, renovate the old one at considerable cost or send the processing work to a federally inspected meat plant in Antigonish, a move that could cost jobs at his tight-knit operation in Bridgewater.
“I’m concerned,” says Greek, who has a full-time staff of six.
“We’ve been here for a long time and I want to keep everybody here.”
He would prefer to open a new plant locally but admits the cost would be crushing.
But standing still is not an option because he will lose sales until he can get his products across the border or back into Atlantic Superstores. Meanwhile, he will try to expand his provincial distribution of products through Sobeys.
If Greek can overcome this obstacle the reward could be great.
“There are just so many Nova Scotians all over Canada,” says Greek. “We’ve got people calling from other provinces, saying, ‘Can you ship this to me?’ We can’t. That is tough.”
Greek is compelled to find a solution, for his family’s sake.
He inherited the business from his father, who learned to make the European-style pudding and sausage as a boy working at his uncle’s meat shop in Lunenburg. Later, his father made the meats in Halifax before opening a business in Bridgewater in 1975.
Richard Greek retired from a management job with the provincial liquor commission in 1994 and took over the business with his brother, who died last year. Their father died in 2005.
“My father was doing this for (about) 70 years and I feel very proud,” says Greek. “I feel I need to keep that reputation and the business going.”
Freelance journalist Rachel Brighton writes a column for The Sunday Herald business pages and the new Herald Magazine.
