"With all meat, no fillers, rare imported spices and fresh onions, no artificial flavoring… Usinger’s is America’s Finest Sausage! (Usinger Amerikas Feinste Wurst!) Yah Yah! Yah!”
The thick German accents of the men in the popular old Usinger’s Famous Sausage television commercial are historic reminders of the company’s old German Milwaukee roots and charm.
Even today, the commercial, which originally aired on June 9, 1975, is a favorite among Milwaukeeans who value the authenticity of the Usinger sausages.
Fred Usinger came to Milwaukee in the late 1870s with $400 in his pocket and a dream of making sausages that people would love. He formed Usinger’s Famous Sausage. His dream and the heritage behind it are what drive brother-and-sister partners “Fritz” and Debra Usinger, four generations later in the business that is now officially known as Fred Usinger Inc.
According to Debra, her great-grandfather studied as an apprentice under numerous German sausage makers and butchers and brought the recipes, the natural ingredients and the taste of the authentic German sausages with him to Milwaukee.
“The history is so deep here, it just runs through our pores,” Debra said. “Fritz and I like to think of ourselves as the gatekeepers of our great grandfather’s dream.”
Usinger’s is still located at 1030 N. Old World Third St. in downtown Milwaukee, in the original store where Fred Usinger formed the company’s humble beginnings.
“Usinger’s got its start actually selling cold cuts to taverns for their free lunch spreads,” Fritz said. “The taverns became dependent on the quality and taste of the Usinger’s product and really gave us our start.”
According to both Fritz and Debra, the concept of authenticity goes hand-in-hand with the concept of longevity.
“We don’t go out of our way to try to be authentic,” Debra said. “We don’t really have to. It’s already so much a part of what we do.”
Over the generations, the Usingers have consciously managed to keep the formulas for their sausages the same as their great-grandfather’s original products. In fact, the company actually enjoys some competitive advantages today because, unlike many of its competitors, Usinger sausages do not contain monosodium glutamate (MSG), a preservative that causes digestive problems for some consumers.
“We have not gone the short-cut route,” Fritz said. “We still use fresh garlic, we still use fresh onions; still smoke over hardwood fires. Those are the kind of things that have kept the integrity of the product over the generations. We have tried very hard to maintain the original recipes.”
The “Usinger elves” play an important role in helping to maintain those recipes but also ads to the authenticity of what Usinger’s is as a company. According to Debra, German mythology claims that the elves are the ones who pick up the slack of the day’s work in any industry after the human workers go to bed. At Usinger’s, the elves play a very prevalent role in the narrative history of the family company.
“The elves have always been a part of our history,” Debra said. “As a child, I can remember running around the factory in search of the elves, but it wasn’t until our dad came in in the late ‘50s and brought the elves to the forefront and really made the elves part of the marketing face of the company.”
Murals, painted in 1909, depict the elves at work and line the walls of the Usinger store. The rest of the facility is littered with playful figurines, paintings and statues of elves at work. Even doors are labeled with playful “Elves Only” signs, and employees continue to joke about catching the elves at work.
Usinger’s is considered a specialty manufacturer. Milwaukee-area residents can find Usinger’s throughout the region but, the products can only be found in specialty stores elsewhere. However, if you look hard enough, you can find Usinger’s products in all parts of the country, Fritz said.
“We aren’t a mass producer,” he said. “It isn’t our philosophy to be in every single grocery store in every part of the nation. We are true to the recipes and true to the product. That causes our product to be a more expensive product, and one that cannot lend itself to commodity production.”
Usinger’s opened a second facility in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood at 303 E. Florida St in 1994. Originally, the facility was used primarily for shipping but has since been expanded to include an additional processing plant.
Currently, production is split between the two plants. However, the Usingers eventually hope to have the majority of production done on Florida Street and have the offices and the store remain in the original facility on Old World Third Street, Debra said.
Usinger’s currently has around 100 people working at the Old World Third Street facility and about 65 on Florida Street.
Usinger’s has come a long way since Fred’s original production of his favorite ‘Braunschweiger’ liver sausage, but the company remains true to its authentic heritage and its production processes.
According to Debra, the new meats, such as Usinger’s flavored chicken sausage or Cajun style bratwurst, have the company’s base philosophy of that old world tradition in mind, but with a contemporary twist.
“We love it because we feel that if our great-grandfather would sit down to try any of our new products, we know he’d love them because they are still true to what he was doing,” she said.
Fritz said the company’s ultimate goal has been to find its niche and do what it does well.
“That’s where the authenticity comes from,” Fritz said. “What we offer others, yes is partly an image that has been cultivated over the generations, but the key is to keep the product true in order to maintain that longevity and the authenticity behind the image.”
The Usinger store has changed very little over the years, and the advancements in technology have not affected the brand that has been created.
“People come in all the time and tell stories about when they were kids,” Debra said. “In today’s fast-paced world, where things are always changing and moving, it’s nice to find things that have sort of ‘always been.’ People can come to Usinger’s and know that it is always going to be, and taste just how they remembered it – that’s authenticity.”
Corporate Authenticity
Fred Usinger Inc.
• Company has been family-owned and operated for four generations in the original downtown Milwaukee store where Fred Usinger formed the firm.
• All products are produced locally and with the original recipes, creating distinctive tastes.
• Legend has it that factory “elves” finish the day’s tasks after the workers have left for the evening.
